


The Tragic Tale of Air Recruit Hot Wings

by fascinationex



Series: transformers fics by fascinationex [7]
Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Attempted Murder, But in a fun way!, Crack Treated Seriously, Decepticons treating prisoners not very well, Infiltration, Interrogation, Jealousy, M/M, Mission Reports, Misunderstandings, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, Unresolved Sexual Tension, a robot gets drunk if that's an issue for you, hungry robots, no sad ending!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2020-12-28 22:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21144536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: Megatron gets jealous and fretful when Starscream tries to kill other people, and an Autobot infiltrator has areallybad week.





	1. SKYWARP

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by a comment [Virtualnemesis](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Virtualnemesis) was kind enough to leave on my fic 'The Anatomy of a Routine Assassination', about how Megatron actually looks forward to Starscream's assassination attempts. (Everything else about this fic is 100% my fault.)
> 
> The structure isn't one I usually go for -- usually I am married to single-POV fics. I'm trying something a bit new to me here. The perspective does change. I hope it is reasonably clear to a reader. 
> 
> It took me way too long to title this fic, and alternative considerations included, "NANANANA HOTWINGS (to the tune of batman)" for no goddamn reason.

**1\. ** _[Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_Check in. _

_The transmissions out from the Victory are monitored – Soundwave, I think. I’ll have to be careful about when these are sent. This one at 01200:33:42, but observation suggests I can probably manage every couple days, as required._

_You can tell Wheeljack that this Thinky-Jammer totally works! I stood right next to Soundwave and talked to him – or at him, hard to say – for ten minutes and he didn’t even twitch. _

_Not that you’d know if he did, I guess. Not exactly an engaging conversationalist._

_Nobody seemed to think I was more suspicious than anybody else in the mess hall, is what I’m saying. Mind you, the mess hall here’s full of Decepticons, so it’s a high bar… Say, did you know Megatron refuels like a normal person? Internal intake through his mouth. Seems surreal, but I don’t know what I expected. _

_The Victory is on half rations. _

_I think Skywarp is staring at my – scratch that. I think **Megatron** is staring at my wings. Frag.  
_

* * *

"What did we say his name was again?" asked Starscream, sharp and suddenly intent. "It was in the file, wasn't it?"

They were fuelling. The single, broad mess hall was lit by several huge overhead lights that highlighted every scrape and scuff on the dark walls. It was furnished with long, scratched and battered benches, a few dispensers, and not much else.

"Huh?" Skywarp looked up from his own energon cube. They were on rations again. Every time they got off rations, something went belly up and then suddenly they were short-fuelled again. Skywarp was getting sick of being thirty percent fuelled.

Starscream's attention wasn't on his own cube, however, despite how he must have felt as hungry as the rest of them, but rather the new guy -- a flashy gold and violet seeker, apparently fresh out of stasis from Cybertron.

Skywarp had noticed the sleek, sharp cut of his wings within about 0.2 astroseconds of his arrival on the ship, yeah. And, yeah, he’d been looking off and on. The new guy was pretty, so shoot him.

But Starscream hadn't seemed to notice. He had glanced over the new personnel file, sneered, and subspaced the data pad without further comment.

He sure looked like he was noticing now, though: optics narrowed, face intent, attention sharp and keen like a turbohound scenting energon.

"Genesis," Thundercracker supplied, sounding more resigned than anything. "He's called Genesis."

"Hmm," said Starscream. "Nice wings, wouldn't you say? Purple, with the gold highlights. Sleek. Very... polished."

His _words_ made it sound like it was a compliment, but his tone made it sound like his software was painting a bright, energon-pink target on the poor kid’s back, right between those fluttering, gold-accented wings.

"Sure?" said Skywarp, clueless. He completely missed Thundercracker making an urgent _shut up _gesture at him one seat over. “I mean, wings like those, hot as fresh slag, sure.”

He followed Starscream's gaze across the mess hall.

The new seeker was next to the energon dispenser, talking to Megatron and, by his side like a quiet navy shadow, Soundwave. If Skywarp filtered out the ambient noise, they were talking about how the Earth-side duty roster differed from Shockwave's back on Cybertron – which it did, a lot, both because it was generated according to Starscream's moods and because a fully manned warship under enemy threat required a lot more attention than a barely-inhabited, stationary tower.

Kind of weird that the new guy was actually seeking out his officers, though. Most Decepticons knew that attracting Megatron's attention wasn't usually a good thing. Even if they'd never met him. It was, like, uhh, base coding, or something.

Thundercracker let the air whistle gently through his vents in a deep sigh.

"Starscream," he said, with a hint of worry. Skywarp tilted his head in Thundercracker's direction. It was like he knew something, and Starscream knew something, and it was just Skywarp who wasn't getting whatever that thing was. He looked to Thundercracker, who was too busy eyeing Starscream to notice.

"Well. We'll see how he flies, won't we?" Starscream drawled nastily. "And it's been some time since I put you all through your paces anyway – you're getting complacent."

"Huh? Wait, what?" Skywarp said, jerking up straight. “Starscream?”

"Advanced aerial drills in two joors," he responded, sharp and decisive. He finished the rest of his energon and scraped his seat back to get up. He leaned over and dumped the empty cube in the recycler, then got up to leave. "Don't be late."

"What was _that_ about?" Skywarp wondered, watching him go. "Did the new guy do something?"

Maybe it was because he was sucking up to Megatron and Soundwave instead of Starscream? A stupid move, for a Decepticon with a flight-capable alt mode. Starscream was the one he’d have to take direct orders from, after all.

"You'd have noticed if you weren't too busy frying your circuits over a nice pair of wings," Thundercracker said grimly. "You're not the only one who's looking."

And, yeah, okay. The cute new guy had nice wings. Skywarp could easily imagine the exact way he'd shudder if he bit gently at their tips.

And it _was_ kind of compelling. New guy – Skywarp had forgotten his name immediately again, so he decided to mentally call him Hot Wings until he actually had reason to file the designation in his memory banks – had a cockpit canopy that was gold, too, and he looked all... all clean and shiny.

"So?" There were plenty of hot seekers on board. Skywarp hardly expected he was the only one who noticed that the new guy was pretty, too.

He hadn't expected Starscream to notice it though...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Skywarp got, uh, kind of the impression that Starscream's taste in interfacing partners ran... _big_. Bigger and sturdier than a seeker. Powerful. And... silvery. And, well, not naming any names, but _starts-with-M-and-ends-in-EGATRON_.

But he'd definitely been looking at Hot Wings, and then he'd decided on drills.

Making someone he wanted to hook up with jump through every hoop imaginable to prove how worthy he was... _was_ kind of classic Starscream behaviour. Skywarp thought back to their trining, and then with the fluidity of practice he killed that processor chain before the memory files could open themselves and blinked his optic lights at Thundercracker.

"So," said Thundercracker repressively, unimpressed, "_Megatron_ was looking, too."

Skywarp almost said 'so?' again, but caught himself after a moment.

"Oh," he said, putting it together.

Thundercracker hummed, a grim sound from deep beneath his chest plates.

"Aw, scrap." 

* * *

** _2._** _[Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_Listen, what you call ‘the interjection of irrelevancies’, I call reading the room._

_Still on half rations. No raid schedule yet, so either they’re running late, or they don’t put it up on general comms. Maybe that’s how they avoid leaks? Think they’ll only let us grunts know before we have to pack up and roll out? I hope not.  
_

_Aerial drills later. I’ll save them for Silverbolt. _

_Starscream seems a whole lot quieter than you’d expect. And also like he has more friends than you’d expect. Weird, right? Who’d want to be friends with Starscream?  
_

_Yeah, yeah, I can hear you already. Alright. A half-ration among Decepticons looks like a cube of about 256 cyberlitres, based entirely on how full my tank is. Or isn’t, I guess. I don’t know the density of this energon (thin, though) and I haven’t swiped a cube to measure it exactly. Guessing it’s on the lower-yield side of midgrades. Tastes like cordite. But that doesn’t mean anything, because everything on the Victory tastes like cordite. War frames **reek** of the stuff. _

_Screamer’s friends: mostly Skywarp, as far as I can tell, but Thundercracker hangs around more than a subordinate would, too. _

_I haven’t heard him yell that he’s going to be the leader of the Decepticons **once** since I got here – so, like, yesterday – so I guess it’s true that people are really different when you see them at home. _

_ Not Megatron, though. He really is exactly like that. Stopped staring at my wings, though. Small mercies.  
_

* * *

The air was cool and, for Earth, reasonably dry. The sky was clear, lit blue by the scattering of tiny air molecules. Far below, the water moved gently in its own rhythm, swelling and falling like some huge, breathing organic. Skywarp’s chemoreceptors caught a vast, salty array of scents he had minimal frame of reference for.

It could have been a nice day.

What Starscream was calling ‘drills’, the rest of their wing might as well have called 'a series of uncontrolled mid-air collisions'.

Maybe Skywarp wasn’t proving how good he was at the absolutely insane flying their much-tolerated commander wanted, but he was definitely getting in some good practice at warping out of danger. That was all right, really: the atmosphere on Earth, and the upsetting possibility of dumping himself in the ocean, could make it kind of tricky sometimes.

“What _gives_,” he finally called out, after _hours_. “The Autobots’ anti-air weaponry’s never been good enough to need this!”

The ‘this’ in question was an absurdly complex evasive flight, which required every participant to remember, and execute in synchronicity, twelve different steps. ‘Advanced’ was a load of slag – Skywarp had definitely heard Starscream complaining that any drill with more than five elements had to be trine-only, because he _knew_ that the whole wing couldn’t be that coordinated all in a bunch. Pit, plenty of their atmospheric flyers still had to track air conditions in _primary processing_, the poor slaggers. And that wasn't even getting into the weird problems the triple-changers came up with.

And now half the wing wasn’t so much ‘flagging’ as ‘ready to expire and sink in the sea and never be seen or heard from again, grateful for the reprieve’. Even Skywarp and Thundercracker were tiring, and both of them were _used_ to keeping up with Starscream’s excesses.

Starscream’s jet form wasn’t that physically expressive, not the way a root mode was, but there was a certain _attitude _to the way he rounded upon Skywarp, in exactly the kind of dimestop turn that half the wing couldn’t get the hang of in drill.

“_I_ am giving the orders here, and I said: _again!_” The last word came out in a roar.

Skywarp bristled. His armour stayed tight, but his engine growled and his vents snapped wide open, creating a distinctly prickly silhouette for a moment. He took orders just fine most of the time – in the field, _duh_, or when they came right from Megatron and he was so much scrap metal if he didn’t (also _duh_). But this was Screamer, and these were drills, and his warp drive was plenty warmed up –

“Perhaps,” said Hot Wings, all sweet and conciliatory, “we might pause for a break?”

His gold-painted canopy gleamed in the sun and in the light reflected from the ocean below. He was one of the very few mechs up here who wasn’t wearing scrapes of anyone else’s paint from awkward midair collisions, and, holy slag, his wings were somehow even sharper and sleeker in jet mode. Skywarp’s sensors all shifted to scan him for a moment, naturally attracted to the object of most _improbable hotness_ in any given area. Smelt him, but the new guy looked good.

“This set appears particularly uncomfortable for some of the triple-changers, for example –”

“Hey!” That was Astrotrain, who should have muted his vocaliser because Hot Wings was totally accurate.

Then Skywarp’s processor caught up with what the new guy was actually saying. All thoughts of saying ‘frag this and frag you!’ and warping to freedom disintegrated in his processor. Thundercracker’s steady, textbook-perfect hover to his left didn’t change, but Skywarp heard his engine change its tone to maintain it, too.

Skywarp wasn’t sure what New Hot Wings Guy was expecting, but _he_ sure wasn’t surprised when Starscream rounded upon him with about ten times more hostility than he’d used with Skywarp. He could hear the weapons systems whining into alert on Starscream’s frame, and his own processes triggered a nervous little subroutine that suggested he, too, should be combat ready. Maybe _Shockwave_ took on constructive criticism if it was logical enough or something (Skywarp doubted it), but _Starscream _–

“I hope this moment of _defiance_ has made you _feel good_ about yourself, Genesis,” Starscream crooned venomously, and oh, that was the name, wasn’t it, Skywarp remembered, and then immediately forgot again, “because it is going to _cost you_.” His voice rose to a shriek that put Skywarp’s plating on edge: “Get back into formation! You will _all_ learn this. Not _one_ of you is getting a rest until you can all do it, and you’ll be _grateful_, or I’ll transform you all into _atomic particles_!”

Everyone else in the air was braced for it, but New Guy wobbled on his antigravs like he was shocked. Poor idiot. Who was running the air drills on Cybertron? _Acid Storm_? Bah.

In tense silence, they got back into formation.

Nobody got turned into a fine spray of their constituent atoms, but by the time Skywarp scrubbed the salts off his plating and crawled onto his berth, he was too damn tired to even laugh at Astrotrain’s brand new limp.

“What’s Shockwave fuelling them on,” he complained to Thundercracker, nudging his wing until he could slot himself partway under it. Oooh that felt nice. He melted into him. “That new guy didn’t tire out any faster than we did.”

Unfortunately he wasn’t exaggerating. He and Thundercracker were significantly better flyers than most of the wing. And Hot Wings New Dude had kept up, even if he hadn’t seemed really thrilled about it.

Thundercrakcer cycled his vents, and Skywarp could hear the soft, momentary kick of his fans running to draw in ambient particles. Their berth tasted and smelled like it always did: old blaster fire lingered with the faint scent of burnt wires and layers of polish-smells both good and kind of lousy had been rubbed into the metal fibres over time. If he caught an air current from somewhere near one of the cracks in the base, there was always the smell of energon from a particularly bad rest cycle.

“He’s just new,” said Thundercracker finally, sounding sleepy. The familiar scents and tastes, as well as the rough, relaxed tone of Thundercracker’s deep voice, made Skywarp’s plating loosen up without his conscious permission. The ship hummed quietly around them, no effortful thrum of extra systems online – just the regular engines, the power sources that kept it all dimly lit and functional. Another comfort.

“Huh?”

“He’s fresh off the space bridge. If we were all as shiny and repaired as that he’d be getting our exhaust up his vents.”

“Huh,” said Skywarp, pensively. Maybe he had a point. The Decepticons who’d been serving on Earth had certainly been _working_, and fuel and supplies were limited. Fuel fed everything from paint nanites to automatic repair. “Better hope Starscream remembers that."

Thundercracker just sighed, which, honestly: _yeah_. 

* * *

** _2.1: _** _[Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_Addendum: I think Starscream is what the humans call ‘a control freak’. _

_I've attached the advanced aerial drills [FILE: AER.34X]._

_Review them yourself before you pass them on to Silverbolt, because 'Air Commander' Starscream has a screw loose.  
_


	2. SKYWARP (STILL) —

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things escalate in a completely sensible way and Starscream shows his keen sense of perspective.

Starscream, Skywarp figured, did _not_ remember that the new guy was shiny and repaired and fresh off the space bridge, because the next day he tried to murder him.

Skywarp should have seen it coming, maybe, but when he staggered out of recharge – away from Thundercracker’s beautifully warmed, smooth plating and hazy relaxed optics – for his early bridge shift, he was still only half online. The drills had not come with an increase in rations, and he’d recharged on under twenty per cent.

Starscream, tireless as he was petty, had already been in the mess hall when he arrived. He was swirling the pink energon in his cube with one finger. The stuff they got on Earth wasn’t completely pure – it wasn’t _dangerous_, but Earth’s resources weren’t the same as the pure energon crystals they’d have used on Cybertron, and they didn’t have the equipment to refine it perfectly. So if you let your cube sit for too long, it would settle, and striations would show up in the colour when it started to separate.

Somehow, Starscream had managed to leave his ration sitting in front of him for long enough to settle and separate. Maybe he was just fuelled by spite alone, Skywarp thought, squinting at the cube. Maybe he didn’t actually get hungry for energon – in which case, it would be nice of him to let _them_ know, and then he could give Skywarp his ration, too.

Skywarp slurped a gulp of his own into his intake before he even left the dispensing unit. It might not have been pure, but anything tasted good when you were hungry enough.

“Disgusting, isn’t it,” Starscream said, before Skywarp had even finished slumping into the seat next to him. ‘Seat’ was probably overstating what it was, really. These were hard, uncushioned metal benches made out of the same scrap everything on the Victory was made out of. Alien… stuff. Starscream and Skywarp fit so well on the same one only because they shared a frame type.

“What’s disgusting,” Skywarp said, resisting the urge to bolt his ration and then just plant his face on the table and fall back into recharge. Starscream was not likely to wake him back up for his bridge shift, but he would absolutely write him up for missing one.

Starscream, who on closer inspection, had somehow found the time to clean up _and_ apply a new layer of wax, and whose paint was positively glowing even under the Victory’s indifferent lighting, jerked his chin toward a little group of cons across the mess. He made an impatient noise: “That!”

Skywarp had to exert a certain amount effort to stop looking at the glossy, glossy red plating of Starscream’s hips and turn his optics over to the knot of other people all the way over there. It was all rough, Earth-built vehicles. Dead End was nice enough to look at, always cleaned up and shiny, but Wildrider and Motormaster lowered the aesthetic value of any group they were part of. Skywarp wasn’t a snob, but their tyres were caked. Gross.

But even as he opened his mouth to point out that the Stunticons _always_ looked like that, and Starscream sure hadn’t been fixated on it before, he caught a flash of gold from behind Motormaster’s bulk. A gold-limned wing, polished to a mirror sheen, gleaming.

The little knot of young grounders were surrounding the new guy, and contrary to all Skywarp’s expectations, they didn’t look like they were even gonna try to beat him up or anything. Although, Drag Strip was definitely gonna grope a wing if New Guy didn’t watch himself.

“Yeah,” he said, vaguely. “Listen, Screamer, there’s no way you’re jealous of attention from _Motormaster_ –”

“What,” Starscream squawked, wings twitching wildly, jerking in his seat. “Motorm-- Are you _malfunctioning_?”

“Nnnoo,” Skywarp said, and decided against telling Starscream that he thought _he_ might be. That one was above his pay grade. Thank Primus.

“Of all the – _ugh!_” Starscream growled. “_No._”

“Right.” Then he had no idea what Starscream’s ongoing problem was.

As Skywarp watched, Drag Strip finally reached out and drew one thick, maybe not-so-clean finger across the leading edge of New Guy’s wing, and New Guy jumped and let out a tiny cute squeak and hiked it up and out of range – _just_ out of range. Like he hadn’t been fluttering his wings at them all three seconds ago.

“You’re right,” Skywarp said, averting his optics and fixing his gaze back on his cube, which was both less unsettling and more interesting, “That’s disgusting.” The energon in his cube had disappeared while he hadn’t been paying attention. His fuel gauge said he’d had it, but it was hard to believe when it hadn’t made a dent in the growling hunger of his tanks.

“Well, I’m glad _somebody_’s still seeing reaso– ” Starscream dragged his own optics away from the spectacle and fixed them on Skywarp, finally. He stopped mid-sentence then, and, on properly recognising that it was actually _Skywarp_ he was talking to and not just some vaguely trine-shaped receptacle for his whining, his expression became very perplexed. “...Reason,” he finished, a lot less certainly.

Skywarp blinked at him. “What?”

Starscream’s own optics cycled in response, and then they narrowed back in on the Stunticons and their new, increasingly uncomfortable playmate.

“Do you know,” Starscream said silkily, in a tone that made three danger proximity subroutines kick off in Skywarp’s deep processing, “I do believe this situation will resolve itself very quickly.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you have a bridge shift?” Starscream prompted dismissively, without looking back at Skywarp.

“Slag.” Skywarp’s internal chronometer said he was right. He tipped his cube back hopefully, in case some dregs remained - wishful thinking - then heaved his tired frame up, and left Starscream to… whatever the pit this was.

His wing drifted over Starscream’s own on the way up, sliding across his smooth glossy plating with a soft, pretty _shiiing._ Starscream didn’t even flinch away from him. Definitely preoccupied.

Skywarp headed out of the mess, and since Vortex had just sat down he chose to jam his empty cube between his slowly-spinning rotary blades instead of putting it into the recycler, leaving the sound of peeved swearing in his wake. A guy had to find his own entertainment around here.

* * *

_**3.** [Genesis to Teletraan I]  
_

_Raid schedule still not posted? Our intel indicated it happens very decacycle, so Screamer or Soundwave or whoever it is has gotta be running late, right? Weird, because they’re still fuelling on these oil-thin half-rations. Boy, do I miss real fuel._

_My efforts to ingratiate seem well-received. ...Maybe **too** well-received. I think Drag Strip smudged me._

* * *

Skywarp’s bridge shift was pretty much as it always was: hours upon hours of processor-rusting boredom interspersed with three minutes of plate-rattling terror when Megatron stomped in looking steamed as the pit. But then he focused his attention on Soundwave, so Skywarp went right back to staring at the security displays in case something interesting happened, so they could immediately put a stop to it. Ugh.

So far, the only thing of even mild interest was that Onslaught was handing his whole team their afts in a simulator training session – even Vortex, who was flying all wonky because, heh, he’d cracked a rotor.

“Soundwave,” Megatron said. Skywarp’s background processing was well-trained to pick up his voice and prioritise it against his threat assessment protocols. It helped that it was an uncommon voice imprint: deep, hollow and booming, the kind of voice you could feel vibrating in your plating. “Keep an eye on Starscream. His puerile and poorly planned efforts to overthrow me will never succeed – but that’s no reason to be _unwary_.”

Sooo if Skywarp had to guess, he’d say Megatron had _also_ noticed Starscream getting all ...weird. There was no reason it couldn’t presage some new plot to kill Megatron and take over, but Skywarp hadn’t noticed any of the usual indicators…

“Affirmative,” Soundwave droned, a voice that Skywarp had a much easier time ignoring.

He turned his attention back to the screens. No Autobots here… no Autobots there…

He wondered if there was anything coming up on the raiding schedule, but it hadn’t been generated out yet – ‘pending assessment of available resources’. Great. Skywarp’s skill set meant he was virtually guaranteed to get a spot on a raiding party, and he did really like when the organics shot at him and then he warped away and their little projectiles just hit each other instead. They shredded so easy, and they were so _messy_. Hours of entertainment right there.

Even so, the real prize for a successful raid was the energon. Skywarp's tank gave a hopeful murmur at the thought.

But no raiding schedule had yet been posted to general comms, which was probably what Starscream _should _have been doing when he’d evidently been busy shining himself up.

Skywarp fidgeted restlessly. These shifts were so _long_ . And so _boring._ No Autbots here. No Autobots there. He scanned the screens. Just Hook sneering at Vortex, Swindle pacing back and forward while he commed someone, Ramjet trying to persuade Dirge to frag him via the brute-force method of wrapping his hands around his throat and slamming him into a wall (which was _never_ going to work, honestly, for reasons Skywarp didn’t even have time to list right now), Starscream’s shiny aft leading New Guy through the dim lower levels of the ship, Ravage napping on – wait.

Skywarp cycled his optics around, back to the footage of Starscream.

Even as he watched that one view more intently, the camera caught the white slash of a smile in his dark face. It was an expression with which Skywarp was familiar.

Surreptitiously, he glanced over at Soundwave and Megatron, who were reviewing something he didn’t care about on a data pad. He straightened and spread out his wings a little, obstructing easy view of the screens past him, and said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say anyway, he rationalised. Starscream was New Guy’s direct superior officer. Hot Wings just had to follow and do what he was told, so –

“What,” growled Megatron, right over his wing, “is _that_?”

Skywarp leapt so hard he whacked his own knee on the console. His fuel pump slammed along beneath his laser core like it was trying to pop all his fuel lines with sheer pressure.

“What,” he babbled, “what’s what?”

For a frantic moment he scanned the screens furiously. Had he been so caught up watching Starscream that he’d missed an Autobot somewhere, or – no, nothing. Even the outer sensors weren’t registering a thing except murky dark waters.

“Seriously, what’s...”

But Megatron was already storming out before his fuel pump had even slowed. Skywarp heard someone in the corridor outside leap out of his way with a clatter.

He glanced back at Soundwave, whose visored face was impassive.

“Hypothesis,” Soundwave droned. “Starscream: does not plot against Megatron.”

“...is that, like, a_ general_ statement, or...” Skywarp trailed off. Had Soundwave been living on the same ship?

Soundwave’s visor flashed. It didn’t mean much to Skywarp, so he turned back to his screens.

Starscream was busy stuffing New Guy into an incinerator.

New Guy was obviously screaming, although Skywarp couldn’t hear it without tuning the sound in on that camera. His wings were thrashing in long blurred streaks of violet and gold while Starscream forced him closer and closer to the red-hot opening of the incinerator.

As Skywarp watched, New Guy drew a blaster from his subspace. Starscream noticed even faster than he had, and slammed New Guy’s wrist against the wall, over and over, hard enough that Skywarp scrunched up his nose, until the blaster went skidding across the floor.

Yeah. Starscream was definitely going to win this one. He wasn’t the commander of the Decepticon air forces because he was secretly bad at killing stuff. Skywarp would pretty much have bet on him against anyone his own size in a melee fight – and New Guy didn’t even have a foot on him.

He propped his chin on his fist and continued to watch. New Guy did manage to clock Starscream in the helm at one point. Unfortunately, the angle he took to do it put him in exactly the right spot to have Starscream hook his thruster and slam his shoulder right into that fancy gold-painted canopy. It shoved his trailing wing right inside the cherry red interior of the incinerator. Skywarp could see the violet paint on that wing _bubble. _The Decepticon brand, once stark against the gold highlight, turned black.

New Guy’s mouth was open, cables straining all across his frame, and, yeah, that was a screaming face if he’d ever seen one. Now Skywarp was really glad he hadn’t tuned the sound in.

“Observation,” said Soundwave, who had drifted silently up to peer over his wing. “Genesis is an inferior melee combatant.”

“Yep.” It was true. Starscream really had this one. New Guy was definitely gonna die. Shame. He'd been pretty.

Except then _Megatron_ showed up on the camera view, and he seized Starscream by one wing joint and New Guy by the flat plane of his good wing – _ouch_ – and tore them both away from the incinerator's opening. He forcibly shoved them apart, putting his own much bigger frame between the pair of them and, probably not coincidentally, the incinerator.

Skywarp didn’t hear what he said, but it resulted in Starscream turning a furious glower right on Megatron. And then, curiously, his red optics drifted from Megatron’s huge frame right over to the new guy instead. In an expression Skywarp would have classified as “uh-oh,” if asked, those optics narrowed, and Starscream’s whole frame went quite still. He said something, then whirled on one thruster and stalked off toward the better trafficked parts of the ship.

So Skywarp revised his assessment: New Guy was still definitely going to die, he just wasn’t going to die _today_.

“Sooo,” he said to Soundwave as he watched Megatron escort New Guy to the repair bay with one huge hand clapped right around his arm. "That new guy, huh?"

Soundwave didn’t respond. Skywarp glanced sideways and discovered that he’d already gone back to his own console.

Skywarp sighed deeply through his vents, and resigned himself to boredom again. Megatron and New Guy weren’t doing anything interesting anymore, and Starscream had taken himself off camera view – either outside the Victory, or to some place on board not monitored by the cameras (which was meant to be _nowhere_, but you never knew).

It wasn’t the _most_ boring bridge shift he’d ever had, but it wasn’t winning any prizes for entertainment value. And Starscream _still_ had not posted the raid schedule to comms. Skywarp kicked his feet and whined.

It occurred to Skywarp that now he never had to learn New Guy's name. He could just call him ‘Hot Wings’ and it would be _absolutely hilarious. _Ha.

* * *

_**3.1** [Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_Reporting from repair bay. Starscream shoved me into an incinerator. _

_Frag me I feel – _

_Too shaky. Nausea. Complete report later.  
_


	3. STARSCREAM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not for the first time, Starscream wondered what it might be like to function in one of those nice, _supportive_ trines.

_ **4\. ** [Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_In an update to my commentary of report **2.1**, Starscream continues to display violent and unstable behaviour. As per **3.1**, I confirm he attacked me. _

_In brief: Starscream ordered me to follow him and then led me to maintenance level B of the Victory, where we grappled and he disarmed me. He then inserted my wing and parts of my starboard armour into an incinerator. (See attached for details.)  
_

_I don’t have a full record of his comments after the event because 82% of primary power was rerouted to maximise sympathetic sensornet function, and higher processing, including file caching, was interrupted at that time. As far as I know, he just didn’t like my paint job. He said it was “shiny” and “purple” and “distracting”. _

_I think... he was going to put my whole frame in entirely and... ah, and melt me. In so many words. Just... like, shove me in, and then stand there and watch, smirking.  
_

_He'd've done it, too, if Megatron hadn't interrupted him – never thought I’d be relieved to see **that** ugly face. He showed up out of nowhere and just ripped Starscream away, and then he dragged me by the wing all the way across the ship to repairs and asked me four times what I’d done to slag off his Air Commander. **Me**? I just got here! Has he considered that his Air Commander has a** screw loose?** _

_The sensory suite on my starboard wing is slagged, the paint’s bubbled and some of my metal’s warped. Hook does not believe in pain patches. _

_There was no indication that he’d found out my role here, so at my best assessment, my intel is still uncompromised._

_Still no raid schedule. Still on rations. Automatic repair at 82%, and not looking forward to more insane aerial drills. _

_Just hypothetically, Prowl, what’s our, uh, extraction policy? _

_Attached: Physical condition report from my internal readouts [FILE: RATCH.023GEN]; after-action assessment of Starscream's combat capabilities, with observations, notes, and recommendations [FILE: ACSS.01]; updated notes for Decepticon command profiling, with my strong recommendation that warnings be updated [FILE: ACSS_AFRAGGINGLUNATIC.01].  
_

* * *

_ **4.1 ** [Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_Update: Skywarp's started calling me “hot wings”. You know, because Starscream... yeah.  
_

_Sir, tell me straight. Did I do something to you? Am I being punished for something?_

_Starscream's looking at me again. So's Megatron. It's... unsettling. _

_Still no indication that they know._

* * *

Genesis’s wing was absolutely slagged. The paint had blistered, purple and gold turned to shades of burnt-energon brown and scorched black. He smelled like the inside of an incinerator, too, like burning metal and silicone. And the wing beneath the horrifically degraded paintjob was clearly damaged, because as soon as he tried to take fight he went all wobbly.

_Poor thing_, Starscream thought, with mixed satisfaction.

But even that didn’t last. Every time his optics landed on the dumb glitch, Starscream remembered how Megatron had interrupted the stupid shiny newcomer getting exactly what was coming to him.

He could still feel the phantom sensation of being hauled around by the back joint of his wing like a sack of scrap. And why? So Megatron could play _rescuer_ to a pretty little novelty with smooth plating and disgusting, fluttery wings?

Not so smooth and shiny anymore, he thought, swinging back toward satisfaction again. Again, it soured immediately: not only had Starscream’s attempt to kill him _not succeeded, _it had positively backfired. Now Megatron was paying him even more attention. It wasn’t quite the way he looked at Starscream, but how long until –

“Starscream, not to, uh, bother you--”

“You _are_ bothering me,” he pointed out.

Thundercracker did not disappear into thin air the way Starscream had rather hoped he might.

“– Right, well, anyway, is the raiding schedule in the works?”

The _raiding schedule_? Starscream pulled a face. “Can’t you think with something other than your fuel gauge?”

“What might that be,” muttered Thundercracker, low enough that Starscream could pretend he had not heard and ignore him, “maybe we can all use whatever _you’re_ using.”

Starscream did, indeed, take the opportunity of ignoring him.

The problem was…

Megatron was an idiot.

Yes. That was the problem.

Megatron was an idiot, big and lumbering and led by his base coding, that was all. And Genesis _was _very pretty. He was a seeker-type, although a sleek, lightly-armoured one, so it was natural. He was not so handsome as Starscream, of course, but Megatron had been exposed to Starscream for millions of years. It was no wonder he’d adapted – it was just like optics, wasn't it, adjusting for the light of Earth’s nearest star.

Genesis was a novelty, that was all. Starscream just had to remove the shiny distraction _properly_, and then Megatron’s attention would return quite naturally to where it was meant to be. Honestly, he was like a giant, heavily-armed sparkling sometimes, pulled this way and that by his every whim with no consideration for how bad it might be for him… Just one more reason why Starscream should be in charge, really. Managing _up_ was such a hassle!

“Hello? Nemesis to Starscream? Starscream, do you copy?”

“Shut up, Skywarp,” said Starscream flatly.

“Oh, you _are_ in there? Then how about that raiding – mmph!” Starscream slapped his hand flat against Skywarp’s face, muffling the primary speaker line in his mouth.

“Shut _up_,” he repeated. “Forget the raiding schedule. I’m busy calculating how much force I’d need to _crush a jet_.”

If he was flatter than a grounder’s busted tyre, crumpled into a shiny metal smear, Megatron would definitely stop paying so much attention to him, and then he’d return all his focus to Starscream, where it _rightfully belonged_.

“Fantastic,” said Thundercracker flatly, in a tone that indicated it was anything but. Unfortunately he was marginally wiser than Skywarp, so he was out of range of Starscream’s hands in his face when he said it.

Not for the first time, Starscream wondered what it might be like to function in one of those nice, _supportive_ trines.

* * *

_ **5\. ** [Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_Aerial drills are harder with a defunct starboard sensory system, a quarter tank of fuel, an uneven paint job and an auto-repair system running at 78% efficacy. And also when your Air Commander personally despises every strut and nut and bolt in your frame for no reason. _

_I’m so covered in collision transfers I look like I was in a seeker orgy. I was not in a seeker orgy. That might at least be some consolation.  
_

_No, there is **still no raid schedule** posted. _

_ Is Jazz **sure** about that? _

_Genesis out. Next check in with moon rise._

* * *

Starscream’s trap worked.

Well, of _course_ it worked.

Starscream had personally looped the camera feeds and constructed it based on an analysis of Genesis’s behavioural patterns.

Despite his generally mannerly and friendly – overfriendly, in Starscream’s opinion – nature and sleek design earning him no end of uncomfortably friendly acquaintances among the Decepticons, he took new, often solitary and meandering routes through the dim, creaky interior of the Victory.

He did it under the guise of familiarising himself, pausing to anxiously examine the construction like he thought the water outside might come rushing in to crush him, but Starscream wouldn’t have been surprised if he was just using the excuse to avoid some of the more… enthusiastic… mechs aboard the ship. He never took one of them back to his berth, either, he’d noted, and wondered cynically if he was saving himself for a bigger prize.

The habit followed a pattern – a search pattern, oddly – so it was easily predictable with a little attention to detail.

The trap worked almost exactly as planned, which was no mean feat given the Earth-sourced materials and vagaries of the Victory’s construction. There was, however, a ten-astrosecond delay between the new jet’s foot hitting the pressure plate and the weight slamming down upon them.

It was just a shame that Genesis was talking to Ravage – sucking up, obviously – when he trod on the pressure plate.

The sound Ravage made when 35 tonnes of dense osmium alloy crushed his tail was _unholy. _This was a thing Starscream only knew because he was hunched over the console in his own suite, illuminated only by the light of its screen. He was keeping an optic on the camera view of the corridor and had the audio pick up tuned in.

He was, of course, on the other side of the base, just in case Megatron turned up for another ‘heroic rescue’ like some pit-spawned, pathetic Autobot. He hadn’t even needed to, in the end – the weight had only barely scraped Genesis’s thruster.

Ravage, however, could not balance without his tail, and didn't seem to walk very well with his injury. After the hiss of releasing pressure, the crash and the high, ungodly yowling, he had needed Genesis to scramble for some kind of lever to use to get the weight off and then lift him to be taken to the repair bay.

As Starscream watched irritably, Soundwave showed up in under a minute, and once he’d looked upon the scene, he turned his expressionless visor up to the nearest surveillance point and stared long and hard. It was like he could see Starscream shifting uncomfortably in his seat all the way across the base through the camera lens.

Genesis, limping, handed Ravage over. Starscream followed their progress by console, tuning out the big cybercat’s hissing and swearing and noticing only peripherally the energon leaking slowly from his mangled tail.

He scowled powerfully and got up, activating the joints and seams along the supporting strut of his back to reduce stiffness. He checked his null ray was fully charged, and that there was a properly loaded blaster in his subspace, and then he headed down to the repair bay himself.

* * *

_**6.** [Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_I am not the only mechanism experiencing hostility on this ship. I witnessed an incident involving a cassetticon of Soundwave's this afternoon. A block of… I don’t know, some kind of very dense metal… fell out of the ceiling and crushed Ravage’s tail. _

_I can’t make this up. We were just walking down that anterior corridor near the boilers – you’ve got it on the maps, just off maintenance corridor B, which I will never visit again – and there was a creak and a hiss and then a giant lump of metal smacked into him, and the next ten minutes was just angry cat screams and energon. _

_It damaged my thruster, too, but it nearly took Ravage out completely. I rendered aid immediately, but he was seriously damaged.  
_

_Currently in repair bay (again), listening to Hook reassure Soundwave in the next room. Soundwave hasn’t said a single thing and I can almost hear Hook’s oil pressure rising.  
_

_Neither of them seems surprised, though. Maybe attempted murder is just how Decepticons say hello. What do we even know about them, anyway?_

_I was trying to ask Ravage about raid schedule, but he said it does get posted to general comms and it is Starscream's responsibility. No raid schedule yet. Why would Megatron keep such an erratic second in command?  
_

_I think you're unlikely to see Ravage creeping around the Ark for the next few cycles, at least. _

* * *

Starscream marched right past Soundwave and into the solvent-and-energon scented bay. Ravage, who was actually important and valuable, was rightly being attended to first – not least, he expected, because Soundwave _was _there, with his face doing its best impression of a bulwark. Neither Hook nor Scrapper seemed terribly comfortable with him staring at them.

He couldn’t immediately spot Genesis, but he’d be a fool to leave with an injured thruster. Between that and the wing, he’d be flying on antigravs alone. And Starscream wasn’t about to let him off drills. Where was the little idiot?

Ravage glowered murderously up at Starscream from his repair berth, which, all right, perhaps –

Starscream twitched one wing irritably. It wasn’t his fault that Ravage had been silly enough to be wasting time with Genesis.

Ugh. “Hook, I expect him to be restored to _full_ functionality as quickly as possible,” he said, loudly enough to carry.

“An outcome we’d achieve faster, were you not in here making a nuisance of yourself,” Hook responded – as though Soundwave wasn’t also right there and clearly settling in to observe for as long as it took.

Starscream didn’t bother responding. He strode deeper into the repair bay instead. There were rooms back there, and only one of them had an opened door… Ah, yes. Through a doorway and upon a camped secondary berth, Genesis was inspecting his own damaged thruster while he waited for someone to care enough to repair him. He looked up when Starscream entered uninvited.

The Decepticon army did not enforce silly formalities like leaping to attention or saluting, but there was something gratifying about how he went still under Starscream’s very presence in the room, hands frozen, optics focused on Starscream. Like a little petrorabbit, hoping maybe it wouldn’t be run over if it pretended to be a part of the landscape.

“Hi, uh, commander,” he said cautiously, and Starscream smiled. Genesis did not appear to find this at all reassuring.

“Genesis,” said Starscream pleasantly. “Well! Hook really has done excellent reconstructive work on your wing.”

“Uh...” the wing in question twitched, like it was trying to flee Starscream’s scrutiny. “Yes. He, he did.”

“After Megatron was nice enough to walk you all the way from the lower levels up to the repair bay himself, of course.”

“Right. Yes.” His good leg jumped nervously. “He did that.”

“Yes.” Starscream came closer, one unhurried step at a time. “Why do you think that is, Genesis?”

A loooong pause. “I wouldn’t, er, presume to speak for Megatron.”

Cute. Starscream leaned in, so close he was sure Genesis could feel him venting, gently, upon his plating. With the other seeker seated on the berth, he was taller, and he used the height discrepancy to his advantage, flaring his own wings, looming. Starscream’s fans were running just a little faster than resting, and he was very aware of the weight of his null ray on his arm. It was warming a little, beginning to draw power from his fuel.

“_Why don’t you guess_,” he whispered, optics burning.

Genesis’s abortive twitching immediately turned into a panicked, backwards scramble on his berth. His wing hit the wall with an ugly clatter, unmercifully loud in the quiet between them. He winced.

All that thrashing and scrambling only got him a few extra feet, lost again when Starscream took one delicate step forward.

“Well, um, I don’t know, but he seemed, er, angry –”

Like scrap he had. Starscream knew, probably better than Optimus slagging Prime, what Megatron was like in a rage.

“Is that right?” he purred. The null ray buzzed gently as he turned it to its highest setting.

The door slammed open with a bang. It sent new air currents over the flats of his wings and brought with it the hot-metal smells of someone in the other room performing a weld.

“What is going on here?” demanded Megatron from the doorway, throwing his huge shadow over Starscream and Genesis both.

Genesis flinched at the sound of his voice, clattering one wing against the wall. Coward. Outside the room, the conversation between Hook and Scrapper fell silent for a moment, then hastily picked up again.

Starscream paused. His null ray’s low, spiteful buzz seemed awfully loud, and he probably wouldn’t get away with stunning one of his own seekers and then murdering him right in front of Megatron. He’d have to at least frame him for _something_. Something _other_ than distracting Megatron.

He powered it down, and then turned gracefully toward Megatron. He spread his arms innocently.

“Why, Megatron. I can’t imagine what you mean. Is it so unreasonable for a dedicated commander to visit one of his injured subordinates in the repair bay?”

Inside, he was seething. Another _timely rescue_, was it? And Megatron glowering right at Genesis as though Starscream wasn’t even in the room. His engine gave an angry little rumble that he couldn’t quite cover – but it didn’t _matter_, because Megatron didn’t even notice!

“It would be a first,” Megatron ground out.

Starscream followed his gaze to see what about the little idiot was _so_ compelling, but he still saw nothing but – scuffs, scorched paint, a peeling, blackened Decepticon brand on the damaged wing. His frame was fine enough, well-cut, prettily-constructed. Was that really all it took? Surely not – Megatron would have done more than casually glance at Thundercracker or Ramjet if that had been the case.

Starscream scoffed.

Genesis cringed further. Disgusting.

Never mind. He would never get an opportunity with Megatron’s gargantuan aft right between him and the other seeker, and if he wasn’t going to be able to interrogate then murder him, he wasn’t even slightly interested in hanging around _here_. Although _Megatron _certainly seemed to be.

“Well!” He sneered harder. “I’ll leave you two to it, then.” He uncrossed his arms and walked toward the door in such a way as to imply that if Megatron did not move out of his way, Starscream would be going through him. Impossible, of course – he was too big too heavy, too… immovable.

Megatron held his ground for a moment, but then he grudgingly shifted aside, allowing Starscream to pass with his wings held high

He strolled through the bay. Hook was still carefully doing something with Ravage’s tail – Soundwave had not moved, and may not even have so much as twitched – and Scrapper was pulling up blueprints of a seeker’s thruster on a console. Starscream went past without comment.

“Should have just let him do it,” he heard Mixmaster mutter, once he was nearly out of hearing range.

Starscream agreed with him.

“_Don’t _get involved,” Scrapper ordered.

Never mind. There’d be other opportunities.


	4. SKYWARP (CHECKING IN)--

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Hot Wings was so doomed it had gone way past ‘not funny’ and come the full circle back to being hilarious again._ A short interlude in Skywarp POV.

_**6.1** [Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_Update: Starscream gets crazier every fragging time I see him._

_Yeah, yeah, some language is and isn’t appropriate in my reports. **You** come here and try doing this, **then** we’ll talk._

_Serious new hypothesis, hear me out: Megatron retains popular support among Decepticons because if he **does** get offlined and overthrown, **Starscream might actually be****come**** the leader of the Decepticons**_**, ** _and not even a ‘con’s mad enough to want that._

_Today he wanted me to guess why Megatron showed me to the repair bay after he tried to shove me in the fragging incinerator. Uhhh… I don’t know, Screamer, maybe because he doesn’t want to have his soldiers murdered before they’ve even seen combat? Just a hunch? A suggestion?_

_Screamer got all in my face about it, too – but not like he does when we see him on the field. He wasn’t even screeching or yelling or **anything**, he just got real up close and asked all soft and quiet, but with this look on his face like… I thought he was going to glitch for real, he looked so slagging mad. _

_Like** Megatron’s **the crazy one for not letting him go around killing his own army over their paint jobs?_

_I thought he was going to whip out a blaster and try again, but Megatron showed up out of nowhere – again – and then Starscream just left. _

_And all **Megatron** says, then, is, like: “Genesis, you are not irreplaceable,” and “Stop making a nuisance of yourself wasting your senior officers’ time and do some work, lest I send you back to Shockwave on Cybertron,” so… that was weird, but I think my hypothesis has promise anyway. If it was me, I’d want Megatron to stay in charge here, too. _

* * *

_**6.2** [Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_ Addendum: **Don’t think I didn’t notice that you never responded to my hypothetical about extraction policy. ** _

* * *

“Should we… like, do something,” Skywarp said, finally. The raid schedule still wasn’t posted, and the Decepticons, from their distracted senior officers all the way down to the rank and file, weren’t getting any less hungry.

Skywarp knew his own automatic repair read outs had dropped into the low sixties. And Thundercracker couldn’t have been far behind, because his optics were less bright and his plating less glossy than they should have been. It wasn’t like Skywarp was _worried_ or anything, but Thundercracker got cranky when he was going hungry, and it made him hard to live with. It was a completely reasonable complaint.

They were in the mess hall, again. On rations, still. And there was Starscream, watching Megatron stare at Hot Wings’ back. Again. Still. _In an ongoing way._

Hot Wings was looking a little the worse for wear, although Skywarp had still seen him at drills – wobbling in the air and slamming into Thrust, hilariously – so he couldn’t have been that badly off. His frame had lost a lot of that beautiful, compelling symmetry, though, and now he was a mess of bubbled and peeling paint and flashes of faintly warped, bare metals. Skywarp wasn’t sure what outcome Starscream had been going for, but Skywarp sure wouldn’t have clanged him _now_.

It wasn’t Skywarp’s opinion Starscream was so invested in, though, was it?

And Megatron wasn’t even a little bit subtle anymore. Skywarp knew that if Megatron had been staring like _that _– all dim, smouldering red optics and predatory attention – he would never have needed Thundercracker to point the attention out to him in the first place.

Hot Wings was either oblivious or pretending really well. He was entertaining Vortex, who was _also_ looking at him like he might be about to pounce – a thing a trineless mech usually found worrying. But Vortex, even a Vortex with low-burning, fascinated optics and slowly-spinning rotors giving a soft tick-tick-tick like an ominous windmill on his back, was nowhere near as concerning as attention from either Megatron _or _Starscream.

There was such a thing as threat priority.

Hot Wings was_ doomed._

Skywarp realised Thundercracker hadn’t said a thing, so he tapped the tip of his wing against his “Hey.”

“Mmph,” said Thundercracker. He was still wearing a paint transfer from more ‘advanced flight drills and he seemed mournfully fixed upon his tiny energon cube. Skywarp didn’t know what he was so looking dour about – _he_ didn’t have a warp drive sucking up every spare unit of fuel in his tanks.

Maybe Thundercracker was getting sick, he thought suddenly, leaning close enough to feel his frame with one wing. It didn’t feel like it was too hot, working hard under the pressure of any extra code. Hmm.

“I think,” said Thundercracker, finally, twitching away from Skywarp’s proximity, “that we should stay as far away from that as mechanically possible. What are you doing?”

That was probably the sensible answer, yeah. Skywarp accepted that. But. _But_.

“He still hasn’t posted a raid schedule,” he whined, ignoring that second part. He sniffed surreptitiously, but there was no smell of burning coolant or smoke, no oxidation smells. He didn’t know what he was expecting, since Thundercracker had seemed just fine when he’d been laying on top of him three hours ago.

Thundercracker peered back down at his energon, having apparently decided to ignore Skywarp acting weird. Skywarp acted weird a lot. Sitting too close and sniffing him was hardly beyond the pale. “That’s… true.”

Scrap, maybe Thundercracker was just hungry. They were all pretty hungry. “Aren’t you hungry?” Skywarp prompted.

Thundercracker grunted, which Skywarp assumed to be affirmative. Then he looked back over at Megatron, who sure didn’t seem like he’d be getting any extra work done, and then Skywarp felt him scan – for Soundwave, probably. “He’s on the bridge,” he offered.

He sighed through his vents, like everything would be fine as long as Soundwave was still doing his job. Skywarp shifted restlessly. Energon acquisition wasn’t strictly Soundwave’s job; Soundwave’s job was like… almost everything else.

“Hey,” Thundercracker said slowly. “If Starscream’s not doing it, and it’s not Soundwave’s job, aren’t _we_ the next ranking air officers?”

What? Skywarp turned his helm slowly toward Thundercracker.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Thundercracker’s dull optics focused on him.

“Umm,” said Skywarp.

This was… technically… not absolutely… an _untruth_. Decepticon rank was usually determined by combat challenge. Thundercracker and Skywarp were in the top percentile of flyers, and they both had certain combat advantages.

They shared a look.

They _could_.

Except that Starscream wasn’t like… _dead_, or on medical leave, or even hiding from Megatron. The same self-preservation subroutine gently suggested to them both, while they eyed each other contemplatively, that stealing Starscream’s responsibilities because he was too distracted to discharge them might be, er,_ misconstrued._

Intentionally undermining Starscream’s authority _could_ sometimes go badly. But being _**seen**_, publicly, to undermine Starscream’s authority was _guaranteed_ to go badly.

This was, in a way, exactly the mistake poor little Hot Wings over there was making. Except he wasn’t a trine mate messing around with insignificant subordinates – nah, he was a complete stranger trying to undermine Starscream’s influence over _Megatron_.

As one, Skywarp and Thundercracker both glanced his way.

“Hahaha,” said Skywarp, nervously.

“Forget I mentioned it,” Thundercracker agreed.

“Uh-huh.”

Maybe Soundwave would do it.

They both went back to watching Starscream watch Megatron watch Hot Wings.

“He’s doomed,” Skywarp said.

“Without a doubt,” Thundercracker agreed.

“_Ha_,” said Skywarp, watching him totally fail to notice that Vortex was leaning in way too close for a friendly chat. “Idiot,” he said, not unhappily, in the tone of a mech very happy not to be in the situation he witnessed.

Hot Wings was so doomed it had gone way past ‘not funny’ and come the full circle back to being hilarious again.

* * *

_**6.****3** [Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_Decepticon command profile note: Soundwave is the most normal of all of them. He’s the only one who seems to give a rusted scrap about anyone else but himself. I really felt bad for him, watching Ravage get his tail patched up and reattached like that._

_Turns out Hook **does** have pain patches, those old-fashioned ones you run through an injector with a cord right up someone’s spinal strut? Having Soundwave there staring right through him jogged his memory, I guess. Heh. _

_Worth noting: medical pain management available by intimidation. Bribery, too, maybe?_

_I’ll check again, but I kind of doubt the raids get put onto general comms on any regular schedule. Face it, Jazz’s intel was old or just way off in this case.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I solemnly swear the next chapter _is_ actually in Megatron's POV.


	5. MEGATRON

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been a week since Starscream had put any effort into killing Megatron at all. He did not know how to feel, or how to describe how he was feeling, but among his many conflicting processes was a growing sense of loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm moving house, so this might be your last Tragic Tale update for a bit. I'll be back, though. This is a statement you may take as a threat or a promise, YMMV.
> 
> Anyway. I am pre-emptively very sorry for this entire chapter. It is very silly.

Starscream was stalking the newest seeker again.

Megatron did not like it. He tried not to get caught up in the petty squabbling of his soldiers, unless it caused operational problems among officers.

However… Starscream’s shameless efforts to kill one of his own subordinates were – pathetic. Disgusting. Surely it was _humiliating_ for an officer (a _very senior_ officer) to scramble so obviously after a warrior under his command? But somehow Starscream’s ego, which was usually his first consideration, was not even prickled by this obscene, ongoing display.

Megatron did not often pretend to really understand Starscream – he didn’t have to. But he knew that any situation in which Starscream chose to sacrifice his vanity for some other goal meant that it was very important to him.

When the new seeker, Genesis, had arrived, he’d come with a data burst from Shockwave’s tower that indicated he was a good flyer and an average warrior, but adaptable enough for deployment in Earth-side operations. He had arrived, smooth and shining – especially compared with the rather battered forces aboard the Victory – and sleek. His colours were nice and, unexpectedly, he was friendly and personable – _not _traits valued highly among the Decepticon army, but pleasant enough when they came with relative competence.

He had immediately noticed that Genesis was the subject of Starscream’s _particular_ regard, but he had assumed only that his high strung second in command was jealous of this newcomer’s shiny wings and easy temper, both of which would be thoroughly tested in his first raid.

He’d noticed, too, when Starscream went all contemplative and softly smug and distant, and had assumed that they’d be back to business as usual in short order – such quiet periods usually came before a novel attempt to overthrow him, after all. He’d even told Soundwave to keep an optic on the situation in case Starscream devised something unusually threatening.

It had _felt _normal.

And then Starscream had tried to shove Genesis into an incinerator.

Megatron had seen Starscream’s vicious sneer on the screen between Skywarp’s wings. His self-defence protocols had startled abruptly online, confused, and he had known then that this was what all Starscream’s distance and silent plotting had been about.

It had been directed, not at Megatron, but at Genesis, and that knowledge had come upon him like a lightning strike.

It felt like walking a safe and familiar route through his own ship in the dark, knowing where all the walls and turns were, but then somehow – missing a step, falling. And the landing hurt.

Starscream would have succeeded in killing Genesis, too, had Megatron not interrupted them. ‘A good flyer and an average warrior’ wasn’t a match for Starscream. He’d been in the maintenance corridor within moments, and had heaved them apart with his own hands before he’d even really recognised why he was so angry about it. Starscream had slunk, sulking, back into the Victory’s labyrinthine, creaking passages, still with his attention fixed on that new seeker – even though it had been _Megatron_, once again, who had thwarted him!

Megatron had been left to haul the smoking, shell-shocked, stuttering Genesis down to the repair bay and Hook’s dubiously tender care.

The incident had prompted him to pay more attention to the situation. He had watched Genesis more carefully, then, keeping an obvious optic on him in the mess hall and glowering at him when he took a shift – especially when Starscream might notice, and for once in his entire misbegotten functioning, pay attention to Megatron’s disapproval.

Genesis, with his blistered wing and ruined paint job, had certainly acted suitably intimidated by Megatron’s ongoing attention. The symptoms of that were obvious: his wings twitched and trembled when Megatron came near, and his plating closed up and slicked down and his optics darted away, fixed on Megatron’s hands and his body but not ever his own gaze.

Their newest seeker had, as far as Megatron could tell, initiated absolutely no contact with Starscream following the scene in the maintenance corridor. On the one hand, this seemed right and proper, but on the other one – how ridiculous, Megatron couldn’t help but think, to slight a commanding officer who had put so much effort into such a display. It was rare that anybody got so much of Starscream’s time and attention, since much of it was usually focused on… well, _Starscream._

But Genesis’s lack of interest or retaliation had not put Starscream off. He had paid more, not less, attention to him, staring with hard and intent optics for long minutes at a time. He, who – he hadn’t even survived Starscream by his _own_ power, Megatron thought irritably. _Megatron_ had had to rescue him! _Megatron_ had been the one to thwart and defeat Starscream – again! Still!

He had given the situation time. Perhaps, he had naively thought, it _was_ some silly vanity thing, comprehensible only to the seekers. Skywarp and Thundercracker had certainly closed ranks, however grudgingly or wearily. Perhaps now that Genesis’s pretty wings were lopsided and his paint job was ruined, Starscream could be content and go back to plotting Megatron’s downfall in all his spare time.

But he didn’t.

Not even three days later, he tried dropping a 35 tonne block of osmium alloy upon Genesis. Oh, there was no _proof_ it was Starscream, but Megatron would have had to be malfunctioning not to know. Especially after Starscream followed Genesis all the way to the repair bay and _threatened _him in that… that _way_ he did, with the purring voice and the close distance, with his null ray humming and his wings spread wide, flared out just _so_ to catch the overhead lights. Megatron had seen it all on his camera view and hastened to the repair bay before Starscream could actually draw a killing weapon.

It had been plain that Starscream hadn’t appreciated the interruption. He had been focused solely on Genesis. And as soon as Megatron had arrived, he’d simply – _left_. He’d left Megatron standing there, seething, alone in the room with a twitchy cowering seeker he had absolutely no interest in.

No rude comments about how he was running things wrong, no sneering _spending time loitering in the repair bay __**is**__ easier than leading an army, I suppose, and not everybody is so **suited** to the task-- _

No. He had just left.

And then Megatron had kicked an IL stand over with a crash, making Genesis flinch and twitch his wings in terror. That, too, had irritated him, enough to truly turn his attention back to their newest and, somehow, most _ irritating, _ seeker.

His leaking thruster was one thing, that was a common enough injury among the air corps. But the wing had looked ugly and fascinating: the flat plane had bubbled in places, and then when the hot metal had settled it had come up in waves and rivulets, warped by the sheer heat of the incinerator. The overhead lights created strange shadows and dips, grotesquely compelling to see, and they shifted as the wings twitched and shook while he glared fiercely at their owner.

If he’d wanted Genesis dead, he’d have been dead, and no amount of snivelling terror would have saved him.

Threatening to send him back to Shockwave to be left in stasis for however long he felt like didn’t actually make him feel better.

And when he left he had had to endure Ravage staring balefully at him from a repair berth, red optics dim with sedatives.

“Do you have something to say?” he growled.

He was treated to the predictable sight of Soundwave sidling in between them. He wasn’t the biggest mechanism on board, but he was more than large enough to obscure Ravage’s slumped dark form.

“Ravage: unwell,” Soundwave had said. It was flat, it was toneless, and his face showed very little expression – and yet, somehow, Soundwave managed to communicate reproach just fine.

Megatron had grunted grumpily and stomped out past them both.

* * *

**7\. ** _ [Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_ Okay, I had an opening while Screamer and Megatron were making murder eyes at each other and Soundwave was off with Ravage and I checked through the reports. We’ve got their scouting reports, attached. Proof that Starscream can do work other than murder-drills and actual murder, I guess. [FILE: DEC.SCT.990.] There’s also a couple others… _

_ Energon acquisition assessment formula – I did not understand a word of it. I think this is one for you. [FILE: DEC.ENG.001] And their energon stores and distribution policy. [FILE: DEC.ENG.002]. _

_ Did you know that stealing someone else’s ration can be punished by having your fuel tank removed and drained right in front of you? Why are Decepticons even like this? _

_ There’s not even a **draft** of a raiding schedule here. Actually, I’m finding a **lot** of our information – especially behavioural assessment notes on high command? – doesn’t hold water, as the humans say. These guys are so violent and erratic, I don’t know how they’ve ever gotten anything done at all _

* * *

Starscream was _ still _ glaring right at Genesis, even as Megatron was sitting so nearby, slowly sipping from his own cube. He couldn’t help that his own gaze drifted to Genesis in response, eyeing the injuries and scowling heavily. Genesis babied them like he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted anybody to know how much they ached, torn between a desire for sympathetic pandering and the base-coding urge to curl up and hide his vulnerabilities.

Megatron, perversely, resented the very sight of them.

It had been a _ week _ since Starscream had put any effort into killing Megatron at all.

He did not know how to feel, or how to describe how he was feeling, but among his many conflicting processes was a growing sense of _ loss. _ He did not like that. Next to him, Soundwave was sending the same ping every fifteen minutes, which Megatron presumed was driving the still-injured Ravage completely spare somewhere else in the ship.

Annoyed, he pulled up the personnel assignments and – hm. No raid schedule as yet. That seemed strange, but he wasn’t paying attention to it right then and he flicked right past it. Instead he put Genesis on three patrols in a row – not good routes with any chance of combat, either, just messy atmospheric flying for joors upon joors.

Starscream jolted in his seat, and then whirled toward Megatron with an expression of utmost rage and offence. Yes, he’d have been automatically notified of the reassignment of air troops, of course.

Megatron growled low in his chassis. He met Starscream’s wide, affronted optics across the mess hall and bared his teeth right back.

Genesis, he saw in his periphery, froze when his own notification came in. Then he downed the rest of his ration, smacked Vortex’s wandering hand away gently, and got up. When he left the mess hall it was not with the resignation of a person facing a long boring job on short rations, but with a palpable aura of _ relief_.

Stupid, ungrateful seeker.

“Starscream can do better,” he said, almost before he knew he was saying it.

Next to him, Soundwave turned his helm, slowly, to regard Megatron. His mask and visored optics hid his expression.

“What,” growled Megatron.

Soundwave’s visor remained blank and expressionless. But he returned his attention to his own energon with the air of someone not touching that statement.

However, the more Megatron thought about the statement himself, the truer he knew it to be. Starscream _ could _ do better. In fact, he might say Starscream already _ had _ done better, if not for the obvious fact that his trine mates were so disgustingly bonded to one another.

Why Genesis?

This question seemed to grow more and more important as the day grew longer, which very coincidentally happened to coincide with Megatron sulking back to his suite and working his way through a good third of his personal stash of high grade.

Why_ Genesis?_

There was probably someone who could answer this, he decided at length. No, it was not Starscream. That would have been ridiculous.

“What does he have that I don’t,” he demanded, finally, leaning heavily on the side of the doorway to Skywarp and Thundercracker’s room.

He couldn’t focus his optics very well – the floor had moved a bit, while he’d been walking here – but it seemed cosy in there. Smelled of – seekers, soldiers, polish. There was a nice mesh blanket tossed over the berth, which made absolutely no effort to look like anything but two standard berths welded together – like _ that _ was regulation or something… somebody ought to say something about that…

“Excuse me,” said Thundercracker, who had had the misfortune of being the one to get up and answer his uncoordinated banging, and whose voice was yet blurry with sleep, “Are you _over-charged_? Sir,” he added belatedly. His optics dipped down to the cube of high grade still half-full in Megatron's hand.

From somewhere deeper in, Skywarp whined in the back of his vocaliser. Was he that heap on the berth?

Megatron checked his chronometer. It delivered the time in an instant, but it took him several long moments to process it. All right, it was sort of late.

He decided he didn’t care.

“Let me in,” he demanded. This was important.

Thundercracker gave him a blank, dead stare for a few short seconds, and then finally he let him in obediently – although Megatron received the impression, somehow, that he wasn’t thrilled. Again, not his problem.

He made it through the dimness and to the berth in a series of uncertain, lurching steps, and heaved himself onto it, causing Skywarp to squawk and jerk upright.

“Megatron!”

“Is it the wings,” Megatron demanded of him, staring at Skywarp’s. They were nice. Good wings. Shapely, beautifully angular. They looked a lot like Starscream’s. He reached out and clumsily grabbed one. Smooth plating, good wax. Flyers always used the good wax.

“Uh,” said Skywarp. The wing Megatron wasn’t holding jerked and then slicked right down like he could make himself smaller somehow. He could not. When he spoke next, it came out squeaky: “What?”

“Genesis,” said Megatron, frustrated that somehow the problem that loomed huge in his own mind wasn’t the immediate focus of Skywarp’s. Thundercracker, sleepy expression giving way to concern, hovered half a step away. “Is it the wings? He hasn’t tried to kill me in a _week_,” he added, feeling that it was an absurd length of time, and expressing himself in a tone that demanded Skywarp agree.

“He – what – _Hot Wings_ tried to kill you?” Skywarp said. “I...” he looked at Thundercracker. “Should we _do_ something about that?”

“Not _Genesis_,” snapped Megatron. He tightened his grip.

“Ow!” Skywarp yelped. “You _just_ said --”

“No! _Starscream!_” bellowed Megatron, shaking him.

“Wh – Oh,” said Skywarp. “Ohhhh.”

“Let me take that,” Thundercracker said soothingly, taking the high grade cube from Megatron’s other hand.

“‘Hot Wings’,’ Megatron repeated, letting it go without a fight. He’d heard Skywarp say that before. He was sure of it. “So it _is_ the wings,” he decided.

He felt oddly betrayed by Starscream’s shallowness, even though he should have expected this by now.

There was a _ bomp_! from his right and then, somehow, both of his hands were empty. He looked at his hand, already missing the warm smooth plating of Skywarp’s wing.

“I don’t think it’s the wings,” muttered Thundercracker.

“Am I getting old?” Megatron wondered. “Does he not _want_ to –”

“You know, I think,” said Skywarp, edging closer to him again with his angled wings well out of the way. He lowered his voice a little, like he was sharing a secret of great value, “that your best bet at resolving this...” he leaned still closer.

Megatron squinted. He, too, leaned forward. “What,” he said, into the pause.

“...will be generating the raiding schedule,” Skywarp said in a confidential whisper.

“...what?”

“You know,” Skywarp sipped his cube of high grade. Megatron had had one of those, but he wasn’t sure when he had put it down. Or, actually, where he had put it down. “The schedule of our raids. For energon.”

“How will that help?” Megatron wondered blankly. Somewhere, a subroutine warned him about the value of accepting any advice from Skywarp. Maybe Skywarp was suggesting that Starscream would be impressed by competence and… and… energon… raids?

He knew from long experience that _ that _ was not enough to get Starscream’s attention. He stared at his face in the reflection of Skywarp’s energon.

“Am I losing my looks,” he wondered. Megatron was not sure he had ever had looks to begin with, but if he had, perhaps losing them would explain –

“I think what Skywarp is _trying_ to say,” said Thundercracker, “is that your, uh, dedication to the cause is more… valuable… than some, uh, new guy with nice wings… and that if you were to focus on –”

“–on the **R A I D S C H E D U L E**,” Skyewarp interjected, extending the syllables out with so much emphasis that they were rendered virtually incomprehensible.

“–Right,” agreed Thundercracker.

“So… it _is _the wings,” Megatron concluded.

Then he remembered something. The raid schedule wasn’t his own task: it was one of Starscream’s responsibilities. “That’s Starscream’s job.”

Which meant – Starscream was _ so distracted _ trying to _ assassinate someone else _ that he hadn’t even done the tasks Megatron had delegated to him?

He checked again. No raid schedule had been posted.

His processor, swimming in high grade, was certain of one fact and one fact only: It _ was _ the wings.

“It’s not the wings,” said Thundercracker, sharing some kind of look with Skywarp.

The mesh blanket had at some point ended up over Megatron’s enormous shoulders.

“But it _might be_ the raid schedule,” Skywarp said hopefully.

Megatron frowned. The Skywarp subroutine activated again. Hmm. No. “Shut up, Skywarp,” he rumbled.

* * *

_ **7.1** [Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_ Update: Starscream spent all day murder-staring at me again. Megatron assigned a patrol route that must be at least 4 times as long as a regular one. Ordinarily, I’d consider this a punishment – but at this point, anything that gets me out of sight and out of mind of Air Commander Crazy’s worth it. _

_ All hail Megatron, I guess. _

_ (That was a **joke.** Don’t let Red read this.) _


	6. SKYWARP (AGAIN) --

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Skywarp really hopes someone else is having as bad a time as he is. (They are.)

_ **8** [Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_ Early report—I'm outside the ship. Mid-patrol. Probably not meant to take a break. It’s definitely against policy, at least. But I’m running this last leg on fumes, and what’s my commander going to do about it, anyway? Try to kill me? Ha.  _

_ Flying patrol gave me access to patrol routes [FILE: DEC.PAT.098]. Still no raid schedule. Asked Skywarp about it before I left – he didn’t say anything, he just made a face and then turned around and left, so… whatever  **that** means. So no raid schedule.  _

_ Will resort to asking Soundwave later, as he appears to be the only officer with any sense. How are these guys still any kind of threat to us? _

_ Personnel updates from Vortex: Skywarp and Thundercracker are an item (the Decepticons seem to view monogamous, romantic bonds between pairs as a novelty; I thought he was going to reveal that they were into something  **really weird** ). As far as I can see, the combaticons all hate each other but still get together anyway. I believe this is the case because I’m  **pretty** sure I was invited to an orgy involving ‘everybody but Swindle’. It seemed like they expected me to be more put off by him than by Onslaught. Haven’t figured that one out yet. _

_ Ravage was dispatched to the Ark – I heard Frenzy complaining about it – so I guess his tail must be better by now. Half his luck – my wing aches like the slagging pit. You think Soundwave will threaten Hook for me if I ask nicely? Yeah… probably not.  _

_ Twenty-two more mechanomiles to fly yet. I’m going to be too tired to land by the time I gt back. A half ration of bad energon never sounded so good.  _

_ Please note that I have read your feedback about the relative professionalism of reports, and I would like to assure you that I understand, and have considered it with exactly all respect it was due. _

_ Anyway. Genesis out, catch you on the next report!  _

* * *

Thundercracker and Skywarp looked at each other.

The room was quiet.

“Thundercracker,” said Skywarp, in a very loud whisper. Atop him, Megatron's engine continued to purr softly, still processing all that high-grade while he was recharging. Skywarp could see the reflection of his own red optics on Megatron's silvery finish, which was an experience that he mostly associated with getting caught doing something against the rules. "_Thundercracker_," he whispered again, louder and more alarmed.

“Shut up, _shut up_, don’t wake him,” Thundercracker said urgently.

But Megatron was heavy and Skywarp was listing slowly sideways under his bulk. “I’m gonna fall,” he hissed. He did _not_ want to be trapped under Megatron’s dead weight, but the cables in his arm wouldn’t hold them both up on the berth forever. He could already feel the joint beginning to destabilise and shake, threatening an automatic release to prevent damage. That jolt would almost certainly wake Megatron, and then he’d realise he was slumped over very familiarly upon Skywarp, and _that_ – Nnooo_. _

In theory, Skywarp could have used his other hand to stabilise them. But his other hand still clutched the half-full cube of high grade he'd salvaged from Thundercracker after Thundercracker had... appropriated it, responsibly, from their leader. And he was _absolutely_ not letting that spill. Who even knew when he was next going to see this much fuel in one spot? _Yeah_. 

He looked urgently to Thundercracker, optics wide. 

Thundercracker made a face that Skywarp interpreted to mean ‘fine, but we _cannot_ wake him’ (a sentiment that he agreed with entirely), and then he had to scramble just to hold Megatron steady when Skywarp’s arm gave a hideous grind and really started to to buckle under the weight extra weight.

Thundercracker lunged to catch Megatron by the chassis, and they both winced at the sharp metallic scrape of impact. But Megatron was out – _really out, _dead recharging weight, _very completely out_ – and he didn’t even stir. The two of them could probably have held him up indefinitely under different circumstances, but between them the positioning was awkward at best: Thundercracker was trying gingerly not to get too close to Megatron's frame and Skywarp was trapped halfway under it with one arm flung out, cube clutched tightly.

Thundercracker angled himself to try to get more of his frame under Megatron’s, so Skywarp could escape without waking him. “Warp out,” he said, through his teeth.

“Huh?”

“Warp out – and, and then we’ll lower him. _Gently_.”

Skywarp looked meaningfully toward the cube in his hand.

Thundercracker made a noise. It wasn't a great noise. “Are you _serious _right now? Just put it down.”

_No_ , because if he put it own, Thundercracker would probably end up with it. Not that Thundercracker didn’t deserve high-grade or any dumb slag like that, but – it was just - Skywarp was -  


Skywarp looked between Thundercracker and the cube, and then he narrowed his optics. He downed the rest of the cube, even as his cables shook with the strain of holding both him and Megatron up. Thundercracker made a very restrained noise of frustration, but even as the high-grade energon burned, hitting his tank and immediately, drastically changing his fuel composition, Skywarp was already warping away. 

“_Ow_,” hissed Thundercracker, unprepared for the sudden weight. One of his joints gave a warning creak, and he dropped Megatron’s huge frame before Skywarp could lunge to help. 

“Slag,” yelped Skywarp, scrambling over to heave him up so he didn’t go sliding right off their berth. Together they pulled on him, but they weren’t terribly well coordinated, and – 

_SMACK_ went Megatron’s helm, colliding with one corner of the berth. 

Both seekers froze. 

Skywarp could hear his own fuel pump, and all of his processes and protocols turned into a terrified litany  of:  _oh scrap, scrap, scrap, scrapscrapscrap_ – 

Thundercracker looked like  _his_ fuel pump might be about to leap out through his armour and make a bid for freedom. 

Megatron mumbled something, which sounded suspiciously like, “srrsssscrmmmm,” a word and/or phrase that Skywarp was determined not to translate from comatose drunk into actual Cybertronian language. 

Skywarp and Thundercracker waited in tense silence to find out if they were going to die, but Megatron – 

Actually, Megatron just rumbled sleepily and curled into the berth more tightly. He had one giant hand curled into a loose fist next to his grumpy, sleeping face, and as he squidged his face deeper into the berth padding, his engine made a soft noise like a purr.

_Oh no_ , thought Skywarp, upon feeling a weird surge from his emotional subsystem. The high-grade was about half of what was even in his tanks, making it an unfortunately high concentration even for a jet, and from a certain hazy perspective, Megatron, blitzed out of his processor and curled up under their blankets rumbling quietly to himself seemed – uh – it seemed – 

“Aw,” said Thundercracker, who had not even had any high-grade to which to attribute _his_ poor judgement. “I am going to have to delete this file before morning,” he added. 

“Yep,” Skywarp agreed. He wobbled closer and crouched to peer at Megatron’s helm. No obvious denting, although it was a little hard to tell from the angle. Phew. 

“’Kay,” he said then. “Where are _we_ gonna recharge?” 

“Uh...”

Skywarp immediately answered his own question by sinking to the floor when he tried to straighten up. 

_Welp._ That was fine. He lived here now, he guessed. 

After a few moments, Thundercracker sighed heavily through his vents and joined him, a little more gracefully. 

“Still don’t wanna get involved?” Skywarp wondered hazily. 

“Even less.” He sounded very certain. 

Skywarp began listing to one side, and Thundercracker grabbed his arm and drew him in to lean against Thundercracker’s side instead, their wings sliding together with a soft metallic  _shing_ . Thundercracker was warm, and Skywarp was halfway to full for the first time in what felt like forever, and even though he felt silly and dizzy, the world was, briefly, pretty much exactly as he wanted it. 

Then Megatron grunted softly in his sleep. 

Both of them twitched. 

“Thundercracker, this is really weird,” Skywarp whispered. 

“Uh-huh.”

And the raiding schedule, Skywarp realised with some despair,  _still_ wasn’t done.

...Dimly, he really hoped someone else was having as bad a time as he was.

* * *

_ **9\. [** Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_ Repairbay. Again. Ho-ok saYs it was Starscam, althou I don’t see how. Guess he’d know thgh. Physicals attacked. [FILE:  RATCH026 d xxxxx xx x.xxx. Xxxxzzzz]  Extraction – processes – pl – _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to preserve my one-POV-per-chapter thing, so I keep getting these very uneven chapter lengths, oops. Next up is Megatron, which is a little longer, and that's also when we find out what on earth... happened... to Genesis... <_<


	7. MEGATRON (is back) --

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megatron woke up in an unfamiliar berth with a throbbing fuel tank, but his memory of where and why took only a few moments to compile and load. Some of it jumped and skipped, mildly corrupted, but mostly it was clean. He sort of wished it wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick heads up: this chapter contains a, comparatively, fairly violent scene at its end, which is somewhat less comedic than the rest of the violence in this fic. (Yes, I do know that this fic has featured several assassination attempts already, but they were in good fun. ...Right?)

_ **9.1 ** [Genesis to Teletraan I] _

_Update: some kind of purging poison or something. It had to have been, I’ve been spewing oil and energon from every single orifice (unfortunately not hyperbole) for hours now. Apparently I’ve narrowly escaped permanent processor damage. _

_Tell him that a week’s wait for a ‘viable opportunity for extraction’ isn’t short enough, I’ll be so much scrap metal by then._

_Two separate mechs have asked me what I did to get Screamer all fragged off – which is what Megatron asked a few days back. I still don’t know but – Scrap. M. coming, later. – _

* * *

Megatron woke up in an unfamiliar berth with a throbbing fuel tank, but his memory of where and why took only a few moments to compile and load. Some of it jumped and skipped, mildly corrupted, but mostly it was clean.

He sort of wished it wasn’t.

With a mechanical clank and a long, rattling sigh from his vents, Megatron levered himself upright on one arm, ignoring the unsettled roil of his tanks. He reached over the side of the berth. His fingers smacked, as he expected, into a helm, so he slid them further down the smooth metal, scraping gently, and hooked them into the cables in the neck of whichever brainless seeker he’d grabbed. Then he tightened them cruelly.

There was a wheeze of fans kicking suddenly into action, a clank as someone lurched out of recharge.

He ignored the startled squawk and heaved him up with casual, overwhelming strength. It turned out to be Thundercracker. Good. Threatening Skywarp wasn’t always so effective.

“You will not speak of this night. With _anyone_,” he added, because sometimes seeker trines did not have a firm grasp of normal Cybertronian boundaries.

“I will definitely not do that,” said Thundercracker, startled far enough out of his own recharge cycle to at least recognise that Megatron was giving him an order. The position had him teetering on the tip of one foot while Megatron’s grip held him halfway aloft and all the way off balance.

He kicked the foot that wasn’t touching the floor and wriggled in Megatron’s grip. It made his wings catch the light from Skywarp’s biolights. In the dim berthoom, he almost looked like Starscream, kicking and squirming pleasantly with Megatron’s powerful hand around his neck. Almost.

The shared a frame type. That was all. Megatron’s tank rolled over dramatically again, and he let go. Thundercracker fell back to both his feet and backed just out of easy grabbing range.

His fans were running hard now, loud in the dark and the quiet. Megatron wondered if that was anything but terror – no, probably not. Not Thundercracker.

“We won’t mention it to Screamer,” said Skywarp, for whom tact and diplomacy were not great concerns.

Megatron grunted. Good enough. He cycled his gritty optics. He had a dull ache in his helm and he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t gotten over energised enough to cause corruption, but the ache was there and it wasn’t going away. He rubbed his helm. Ow.

Both Thundercracker and Skywarp were watching him now, the same way a petrorabbit rarely chose to take its optics off a turbohound in close proximity. The dull glow of their red optics seemed bright in the dark.

“Anyone,” Megatron clarified in a growl.

“Anyone _or_ Screamer,” Skywarp agreed, a convoluted piece of logic that Megatron just straight-up elected not to address.

“Yes.” He got up from the berth carefully, but the transition from seated to standing was easier on both his tank and his helm than had been the one from reclining to seated.

He faced the seekers and their gazes met.

Then there was a long and awkward silence.

Thundercracker and Skywarp stared at him.

“So... Uh. How’s your head?” Skywarp asked.

Thundercracker kicked him.

_Clank._

“...Fine,” Megatron lied suspiciously.

“Oh. Good! That’s good. Great. Because, you know, with high-grade -”

Megatron’s optics narrowed, zooming in on Skywarp's deeply suspect face.

“Uh,” said Skywarp, sensing danger. His vocaliser made a telling click as it was muted, and Thundercracker’s wings relaxed marginally at the noise.

They went back to silent staring, and for a long moment Megatron stared back.

Nobody said anything for a loooong moment.

“As you were,” said Megatron, finally.

Then he cleared his vents with a soft, rough cough of static and left their berth room. Voices, muffled, immediately rose behind him. He ignored that, too.

Helm ache aside, it had been almost a full cycle since he’d seen Starscream, and a quiet Starscream was an ominous thing indeed.

The very moment he brought up his comm suite Megatron realised that Starscream had in fact _not_ been quiet at all. He had written Megatron a snippy memo about not obstructing or interfering with established channels of command, which Megatron deleted without committing to memory or even really reading in more than casual depth – and a short report from Soundwave.

When Megatron had asked that Soundwave keep one optic on Starscream, he had not expected to receive so many reports about their new recruit.

Genesis was in the repair bay. Again.

Megatron growled to himself, threw his shoulders back, lifted his aching helm, and stormed off toward the repair bay himself. He accessed the report and checked the timestamps as he went, then remotely grabbed the footage. He knew already that it was not looped, and it had no tell-tale marks from editing. Soundwave had checked it – he’d been proactive about it, following Ravage’s “accidental” injury.

Megatron read the report and watched the footage three times on his way to the repair bay, but by the time he arrived he _still_ had no idea how Starscream had managed to do it.

“It’s a simple purgative,” Hook said, looking at Megatron with a wary gaze when he slammed into the repair bay. “He’s past the critical stage. Under my expert care, he will recover.”

Starscream had very nearly succeeded, then, at poisoning Genesis even as he refuelled in the middle of the mess hall.

It was impressive: he seemed to have predicted down to the very moment when Genesis would return from his very long patrol flight and gambled on whether or not he’d go to the mess hall or the wash racks first, then _somehow _devised a way to slip him a poison in the middle of the mess hall without compromising their energon stores or affecting anyone else.

And _both_ the security footage and the Victory’s lifesigns scans indicated he’d been in recharge at the time. A purgative was only a _serious_ threat if a mech was already low on fuel, but with the Decepticons on rations and Genesis coming in from a punishing triple patrol, it was a safe bet.

Starscream might not even have been a logical suspect, had the methodology not been so absurdly underhanded and cruel – and, well, the target…

Megatron’s gaze tracked across the repair bay to the tucked-away little room Hook had indicated, ignoring the way the Constructicon was eyeing him.

Starscream had never gone to such lengths to kill Megatron – or, rather, of course he had, but he was always _there_, smiling or sneering, giving himself away. Here, he had intentionally removed himself from the environment to lull Genesis into a false sense of safety. He’d carefully constructed a trap using what would have seemed like a public resource, the communal energon dispensers.

Starscream had never shown this degree of cool-headed, meticulous planning when he tried to assassinate _Megatron_.

...Had all of the attempts on _him_ been half-sparked? Had the full power of his own second in command’s processor never been truly engaged when he plotted against Megatron?

With a tank-churning, mounting sense of inadequacy – quickly smothered by _betrayal _and_ fury –_Megatron turned on one heel and stomped into the secondary room where the Constructicons were keeping Genesis.

The door cracked against its stopper when he shoved it aside – it had not opened fast enough on its automatic setting. The hinge creaked in protest on its rebound.

And there he was, one wing suspended in a brace, lines pumping medical grade energon into his worthless frame, bypassing his unreliable tank. He was surrounded by several other machines, purifiers and the like. They seemed large next to him, humming and purring away much more happily than the exhausted frame on the berth. His plating was streaked and dusty.

Genesis stopped fiddling with his data pad and looked up. His face was streaked, too, although with coolant instead of dirt. Like he’d been miserably sobbing to himself back here, wallowing in his hurt feelings –

_You don’t know the first thing about misery_, Megatron thought darkly. _But do not worry, for I am willing to teach you_. The cables in his arms creaked as his hands balled into tight fists.

His enormous shadow fell across Genesis on the sturdy medical berth, dwarfing that sleek, damaged, winged frame, and Genesis’s optics went pale as what fuel he’d gotten into him was rapidly redirected in response to a perceived threat.

What actually came out, when he let his vocaliser click on, was: “I will _rip off your wings and burn them to **ash**._”

The words came out of him like they’d been punched, a burst ugly passion, in a scream of such volume and grinding, engine-deep rage that he heard Hook drop something outside – and then go very, very silent.

Genesis heaved his frame off the berth, upsetting the stand and the tubes carefully fed into his lines. Medical grade energon, thick and pure, spattered the floor and the berth frame as the tubes snapped.

That did nothing to assuage Megatron’s rage – on several levels. Part of him hated the waste of it, and the much greater part of him could simply not see the appeal in such a vile, snivelling little coward. When Starscream cowered and begged for his miserable life, it was because he’d been brought low from some grand, ambitious height; Genesis… started low. And stayed there. He wasn’t even _interesting_.

The vile, snivelling little coward in question screamed in pure terror and dove beneath the medical berth.

Megatron snarled, and with growl of his engine and a blast of blistering heat from his vents, he ripped the berth out of its bolted-in settings and hurled it across the room. It impacted with a crash that shook the Victory’s walls.

“Do not run from me!” he bellowed thunderously into Genesis’s smeared face. There was new coolant now, crying again, fresh tracks streaming from behind the edges of his optical lenses as his emotional subsystems tried to flush the chemicals out of his helm, with evidently little success.

“No, no, no,” he was saying, scrambling across the floor on his aft and heels. The sound of metal screeching against metal filled the room, almost as loud as Megatron’s voice had been. “I haven’t _done _anything! No, no –”

His wings hit the far wall with a clank and his rising, hysterical voice cracked into panicked static at the solid shock of it. He stared at Megatron, shaking violently, and his vocaliser gave him nothing but static.

It was pathetic. This would be nothing like administering discipline to – or even just beating up – one of his own, tested warriors. He took a step forward, shaking the machines in the room with the weight and heft of his frame as each footstep landed. Genesis looked like he was trying to shove himself through the wall. The snivelling hysteria did not cool Megatron’s temper, though – rather, it irritated it further. Did he think _this_ would spare him? Did he think Megatron would be moved by ‘no, no, no,’ and nonsensical screaming? Did –

“Forgive me, mighty Megatron, but -- that equipment,” said Hook, from the doorway. He sounded like he already regretted saying it.

Megatron turned from his measured, predatory approach toward the cornered Genesis and glowered at the medic, who hunched and clenched his jaw, but who did not magically go away just because Megatron wanted him to.

“By all means, take him out and turn him into spare parts,” he said, raising his hands placatingly. Megatron’s engine growled, low and deep and ominous. “The gastrotank fuel suction pump,” he gestured weakly to one of the machines that had been attached to Genesis via a long, sick-looking tube. It was leaking half-processed fuel onto the floor now, creating a slick, pink-tinged puddle. “It is – you see, it’s delicate. We –”

Megatron knocked the softly humming machine in Hook’s direction – not very roughly.

He lunged to catch it, snapping the tubing, and then he immediately hoisted it into his arms like a beloved sparkling and disappeared again, repeating, “Thank you, Megatron,” obsequiously all throughout his retreat.

The interruption, unwelcome though it was, gave Megatron enough time to pause and consider his options.

Genesis was still cringing, crouched and trapped in the corner, shaking from his blistered wings to his damaged thrusters, and although he had gotten quieter, it was only the quiet of some small, lowly thing hoping a predator might yet overlook him.

Megatron would _not_ overlook him. Starscream had seen to that with his own relentless, misdirected attention.

Perhaps it _was_ the wings, he thought, even though both Thundercracker and Skywarp had given him inconveniently mixed messages on that count. He had some lightly-corrupted memories of concluding that the wings had something to do with it, anyway. Also of Skywarp asking after the raiding schedule, which seemed... odd.

Genesis’s wings were not the smooth, shiny, symmetrical expanses they’d been upon his arrival and Megatron did not see their appeal – he’d looked, earlier, when he had been able to imagine sinking his teeth in and denting the pretty, shiny things, but now they were welded, blistered, lopsided. Starscream had done a number on the little idiot, hadn’t he, and somehow with incredibly little inconvenience to himself. Just everybody else. As usual.

But Megatron was not a seeker. He may have been convinced that it _was_ the wings, but he had little idea what it could be _about_ them that enamoured Starscream so…

He wasn’t going to kill him, Megatron decided. He didn’t have to, yet. And they didn’t get new soldiers to fill out the ranks every cycle.

He powered up his cannon and listened, stone-faced, as Genesis started screaming again as the air filled with the dull whine of its power cells. The screaming only got louder, higher and more desperate. Megatron ignored it utterly. Instead, he took aim and vented out, steady, and then shot him. 

The blast of his fusion cannon opened a hole in the middle of Genesis's right wing, one that would leave a much more significant mark than just a few little blisters under his paint. Melted metal slapped loudly against the wall behind the wing. The smoke that rose from it reeked of burnt wiring.

Genesis’s pathetic little screams turned into raw, full-voiced, agonised howling. Watching him writhe and wail, Megatron thought the sound suited him rather better. No more of that 'no, no, no,' nonsense; now he was just making noises.

Megatron leaned down and in, close enough to feel the blistering hot wash of gasses from his vents cycling frantically. He closed his hand around his violet neck, took him by the throat cables, squeezed him quiet, and dragged the still-buzzing muzzle of his cannon all the way up his golden cockpit, over the vents on his shoulders, right up in a long scrape all the way to his helm.

Genesis’s optics bleached absolutely white. The noise of his fans cut off completely as they stalled out in pure, mortal dread.

“Be thankful,” Megatron cautioned him in a low, even voice, “that I am leaving you functioning. The _inconvenience_ you are causing me has not yet _outweighed_ your potential use.”

The fans started again with a violent stutter, knocking wildly, and Megatron felt his vents blast heat across his arm.

He let go of his throat cables and turned away. He heard Genesis begin crying again when he left.

Megatron, helm still throbbing furiously, went to find Starscream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: we find out what the hell Starscream actually _did_ do <strike>since I think we can safely assume Megatron is giving him too much credit.</strike>


	8. STARSCREAM (FINALLY)--

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starscream throws the furniture and Genesis comes to a troubling conclusion.

Starscream had not expected that there would be a medic _in the mess hall _when Genesis so-unwisely mixed his energon ration with the triple-refined aerosol that he had, very unfortunately, flown right through on his way back to the Victory from patrol. It was rotten luck – medics so often fuelled in the repair bay, busy and deeply insular. 

Starscream, of course, had been undergoing the recharge of the righteous at the time and had only heard what had happened when he plugged into a console to look for a time of death. 

Obviously, there had been no time of death. There was no influx of spare parts to the repair bay and no frantic double-checking of everyone’s rations, even. Mixmaster, he would later learn, had simply checked a sample from the mess hall at Scrapper’s instruction. They’d immediately pegged the problem as a poison, because the compound in Genesis’s vents hadn’t even finished breaking down before he’d been able to get help. 

Two minutes. It would have taken _two minutes_, with a flight-frame’s delicate equipment and carefully calibrated systems. 

He had long known the toxin would be an ineffective agent against _Megatron,_ of course – Megatron did not undergo mach speeds with his vents wide open to rapidly distribute cool air through his whole system, and his sturdy systems would have required a massive dose anyway. But a jet? A light, fast jet with vulnerable, slimmed-down components? He should have been _bubbling his remaining energon out through his seams! _

Starscream’s internal systems reminded him that he had to be finished tearing apart Megatron’s latest stupid plan – to use the increasing human interest in exercise in the pursuit of physical beauty to construct a “gymnasium” that would turn their energy output into energon, absolutely ludicrous – before the bridge shift changed over. 

Another note was waiting in his queue: **_RAID SCHEDULE? _**

It was from Skywarp. Skywarp, Starscream reasoned, couldn’t be _that_ hungry on his rations, because he plainly had had enough energon to get _over-energised_ and send irritating notes to Starscream. 

Starscream didn’t bother to revisit Megatron’s absurd plan before he pulled up the current feed from the repair bay. It showed Hook and Scrapper bickering over some kind of device and Genesis slumped on a damaged berth, so heavily sedated he was leaking oral lubricants, with one wing showing signs of heavy patching. 

That damage to his wing was new. He wouldn’t be able to fly with it. And from the scorch marks on the wall, Starscream had an inkling of how he’d gotten it, too. 

He fired off a rude response to Skywarp and then deleted his message even as he skipped back through the available security footage. What had happened while he’d been recharging..? 

Starscream watched, face blank and tense in the darkness of his own rooms and the sickly glow that flickered from his console screen. He tuned the audio in and tapped his fingers on the console’s rim. 

His own wing twitched when he heard Megatron threaten Genesis. It wasn’t that he especially enjoyed being kicked around by Megatron. Nobody enjoyed that—not when Megatron was this enraged. Starscream could hear his fans roaring and see his actuators tight with fury. 

Even from the security footage, he winced at the report of Megatron’s canon. 

He didn’t even bother to sneer at Genesis’s stupid screaming and howling. 

It wasn’t that Starscream secretly wanted to be the one with a giant hole in his wing, snivelling on the floor. But the attention Megatron showered upon Genesis was vastly disproportionate to what that newcomer deserved. 

Why was Megatron so mad about it? What was so special about Genesis? 

‘The inconvenience you are causing me has not yet outweighed your potential use,’ Megatron had said, low enough that the audio pickup had almost lost it. 

_What_ potential use? 

Starscream’s claws dug into the edge of the console, peeling back a long curl of metal with an ugly _screee_. 

_**What potential use?**_

Genesis loomed larger and larger in Starscream’s processor as he effortlessly received what was indisputably Starscream’s due. 

Megatron usually saved his grand rages for Optimus Prime and Starscream alone, and Starscream had only barely come to terms with sharing Megatron’s most wild and febrile passions with the leader of their age-old enemy, Primus’s alleged chosen. 

Genesis was _nobody_. 

And when Starscream was through with him, by Primus, he’d be less than nobody. He’d be _atomic particles drifting in the wind._

He flicked the console back to the current footage of the repair bay. 

Fine. 

This was fine. 

Starscream would just have to do better next time. 

He settled in to plot

* * *

It was sheer coincidence that Starscream was actually working when Megatron came to find him and blew into his room—his _private_ quarters, as it happened—without so much as a by-your-leave. 

Starscream had gotten all tangled up in his plotting, and subroutines from his emotional subsystem kept sneaking into his every thought until his processor had started to heat under the stress. Ripping into Megatron’s stupid ‘gym’ plan was a welcome break and a return to a much-missed normalcy. 

The Victory’s doors were not supposed to slam open, being automatic, but Starscream’s barely had time to beep an all-clear to Megatron’s override and disengage the lock before his thick, dark fingers curled around the moving metal and shoved it aside. The door shrieked in protest and scraped on its runner with a shower of fine orange sparks. 

Starscream’s wings stiffened and spread wider. He felt parts of his plating shift automatically, affronted, to make him look bigger and more threatening. 

“Welcome to my private quarters,” he drawled, hard and flat and openly hostile-sounding. 

Megatron’s big frame took up all the space in the doorway. His huge shadow streamed into the room. His fans were already humming softly on a low setting, indicating that his internal components were working hard enough to generate a fair amount of heat in that huge sturdy frame—probably some kind of turbulent emotional state. 

Usually, Starscream didn’t mind seeing Megatron all worked up, big frame heaving and vents blasting hot air. It usually happened on the battlefield, or when they were bickering, and while the potential for violence was always there, sometimes that was… exciting, in its way. As long as he didn’t fear that Megatron would permanently damage or deactivate him—and he didn’t. Mostly.

Right now, however, Starscream was unpleasantly reminded of the scene he’d just watched play through in the ship’s repair bay. This did not seem to bode well. That fusion cannon was even still running warm, to his sensors. Had Megatron stormed all the way across the ship like this? 

Megatron’s optics glowed like coals in the shadows of his scowling face. They seemed to pause in their movements for a moment when they scanned the screen behind Starscream’s stiff, offended wings and noticed that it contained the notes on his own latest ploy for creative energon acquisition. 

Whatever he thought about that was not apparent, however, because he seemed to dismiss it only a moment later with a little shake of his helm—a helm which Starscream suddenly realised, taken slightly aback, was subtly dented on one side. Primus only knew what had caused that. It certainly hadn’t been Genesis, who had done nothing but whimper and cower before him in the repair bay… 

“I have been patient, Starscream,” he growled thunderously. 

_When was this_, Starscream wondered, _and why wasn’t I there?_ But he knew better than to say it aloud, especially when Megatron had shown up looking like _this._

“What is it that you’ve been plotting?” 

Starscream’s processor stalled for about half an astrosecond, because, other than Genesis’s untimely demise, he wasn’t planning anything that did not already fall under general Decepticon business at all—and precious little of that, even. 

One of his wings ticked irritably. 

“Before you barged into my private quarters, _master_, I was reviewing your…” he hesitated “…very creative plan to generate fuel from the humans.” There was a lot more he wanted to say, but he mistrusted Megatron’s temper—mistrusted it enough, in fact, that he did not immediately launch into a critique of the dumb plan and instead simpered, “I’m sure with my expertise and a few, er, minor tweaks, the plan is…” 

This, if anything, seemed only to enrage him further. Megatron swung one arm expressively out, and his fist slammed right into the plating of Starscream’s abused door. The metal crumpled around it with an unholy sound. 

Starscream flinched, and then immediately rallied, halfway disgusted with himself. He’d lived with Megatron for millions of years, and he wasn’t about to start flinching at his _every movement_ now. He was just… primed for it, given the recent memory file of Genesis’s wing. 

He straightened in his seat—had not bothered to stand when Megatron stormed to his door—and bared his teeth. “_Megatron_,” he started, utterly incapable of keeping his ire out of his voice. This behaviour was outrageous— “_With Genesis!_” Megatron’s voice was thick with the ominous rumbling of his powerful engine, buried deep within all that hulking metal. 

With _Genesis_. Starscream’s vents slammed closed. Fragging _Genesis_, of course it was. 

Megatron took one threatening step into the room. 

Starscream shot out of his seat, wings flared wide. His power distribution system went from idling to full use in an astrosecond, and his biolights flared with light, bouncing their glow off the room’s interior walls with their sudden brightness. 

“_Genesis,_” he seethed. “_**Genesis!**_ Oh, yes, you’re _so concerned_ for Genesis, aren’t you?” His hands, balled into fists, were trembling with the tension of his cables. “_Racing_ to his rescue, checking in with every scratch and dent… dashing around the ship like some pathetic juvenile… oh, yes, you take a very keen interest in that con’s welfare, don’t you, Megatron!” 

“Somebody ought to,” Megatron said, dark and insinuating, “since it seems his commanding officer’s interest is in _only one thing_—” 

“You try to pin this on _me_?” Starscream shrilled. 

How dare Megatron storm in here, screaming and carrying on when this whole situation was only his own fault? If he could just keep his stupid optics to himself— 

“Out,” Starscream said. He gestured plainly to the door. 

“_Excuse me_?” Megatron appeared actually shocked at this audacity, that Starscream would try to throw him out of anywhere on his own ship. “I think you forget, Starscream, that—” 

But Starscream’s processor was a jumbled snarl of conflicting impulses, and he barely even heard him posturing now, blind with rage and thwarted pride. 

“OUT!” he shrieked at the very highest setting of his vocaliser, loud enough that they would not even need surveillance to hear him from the bridge. 

He reached behind him for the back rest of his chair, and then wrenched it up, ignoring the whine of tortured metal and the loud _pop_ as a bolt gave way. He heaved it up, cables in his arms and back strained to their limit, and when it came free he turned from the hip and hurled it at Megatron’s _stupid — dented — head!_

Megatron knocked it aside with one hand, and the chair went clattering into Starscream’s berth deeper in the room. “_**OUT!**_” Starscream bellowed again, so shrill and loud that even Megatron twitched away from the noise of it, “GET OUT!” 

He could feel his own fans spinning hard inside his tightly-sealed frame, his coolant starting to bubble, and he screamed like a wild thing, wordless and enraged and uncontrolled. 

“You barge in here, whining about that pathetic little slagheap drone, when this is entirely _your_ fault—” he sputtered and paused, heating further and twitching as his need to clamp all his plating down warred with the need to open his vents. He couldn’t find the right words to accurately communicate his fury. “Get out,” he said, at a more reasonable volume but not in a more reasonable tone. 

Megatron’s vocaliser clicked, no doubt in anticipation of reminding Starscream whose ship they were aboard, but Starscream’s raging had driven him back a step in surprise—enough for Starscream to grab the busted door and heave it across the doorway between them. It closed with hideous grind and a deafening _**clank.**_

“And get that dent hammered out of your helm!” Starscream yelled at him through the metal, even as he punched in his codes, because apparently he was unable to help himself. “You look ridiculous!” 

The lock engaged, and then a second lock of his own devising lit up the pad. The door hissed uselessly as it tried and failed to seal the room, but at least now Megatron would have to break it down if he wanted to come in and—and _unjustly threaten_ Starscream some more. 

He seemed to realise this, too, because when the security pad rejected him he thumped fruitlessly on the door and howled, “Starscream!” 

He persisted for only a moment or two before making a low, ugly snarl with his engine and clanking furiously away. 

In the sudden quiet left in his wake, Starscream’s vents cracked open wide and his processor felt like it was spinning dizzily as all the heat rushed out of his internals. 

He picked up the chair, righted it—as much as he could, anyway, for of course Megatron had damaged it with his flailing arms—and sagged into its lopsided seat. 

He rubbed one hand over his optics and let his wings flutter anxiously, for he was nearly alone now, and Soundwave wouldn’t bother to tell anyone. 

That… had not gone entirely as he might have preferred. 

Clearly, he thought, with his still-hot processor, this was Genesis’s fault. 

* * *

_**9.2** [Genesis to Teletraan I]_

_They must have figured **something** out, because now Megatron is – he put a hole in my wing. Just… a giant chunk, missing. _

_It’s strange. I can still feel the place where it was, but there’s nothing there. _

_I can't wait a week. I barely made it through the first week. I’ve been shot, poisoned and set on fire. If this is standard Decepticon hazing, though – Vortex and Skywarp don’t even seem surprised – _

_I don’t – _

* * *

Genesis stopped writing his report at an internal ping. 

Megatron had put a meeting – a private meeting – in his schedule. It sat there, innocuous-looking, an insistent ping that he really had to accept. 

He vented out, huge and staticky with interference from the oils and energon that he’d not yet managed to wash out. 

There was no way, he thought, feeling cold and numb as the realisation settled over him like a new and uncomfortable cloak, that he would get an extraction before he was scheduled to meet with Megatron. And on the Victory, deep beneath the ocean, there was nowhere to run. 

Genesis checked his weapons and found that, having come to this conclusion, the determination to act steadied his unreliable spark. The only way out was through. 

Through Megatron, in this case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point I am feeling very "time to stop worrying about how good the content is and just post the stupid chapter", about this one. I'


	9. MEGATRON (again)—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is no end to the things Starscream can get away with, and Megatron gets to hold the communal brain cell for once.

The question beat like a primitive drum in the inside of Megatron’s aching helm: Just how had Genesis managed to capture Starscream’s attention so thoroughly?

He was already in a foul mood by the time he stormed through the corridors and arrived at the door to Starscream’s quarters aboard the Victory, and by no means did Starscream’s cool and drawling, “Welcome to my _private quarters_,” calm his temper.

Megatron’s fuel was already pumping fast, his pump thumping in a steady mechanical rhythm beneath his laser core. His cannon was hot on his arm, and Genesis’s pleas and screaming still seemed to echo in his audials. 

At least Starscream’s calculating and affronted stare was vastly different to Genesis’s averted optics and piteous little engine coughs. 

Starscream glowered steadily at him. The light of his console screen glowed on the sweeping, perfect angle of one pale wing. Megatron could make out something on the screen just over it—a scathing assessment of one of his own recent plans. 

At least he was still paying attention to _something_, Megatron thought, and then immediately felt the swell of bitter rage that followed it. Was he supposed to be placated by scraps of attention from Starscream now?

No. He’d given this nonsense all the time it deserved, and it was time to rein in his wayward second in command again. Starscream did have to be reminded of his priorities every so often. 

“I have been patient, Starscream,” he began in a voice only slightly corrupted by the suppressed growl of his engine. Starscream greeted this opening with an expression of disbelief, which he magnanimously ignored. “What is it that you’ve been plotting?”

He had to have been plotting something. The alternative, that Starscream's obsessive interest in Genesis was _genuine_, and he was trying to provoke a response? That did not bear consideration. Megatron wouldn't think it. He was already too angry.

Starscream’s expression, if possible, soured further. He flicked his fingers in the direction of the console screen. “Before you barged into my private quarters, master, I was reviewing your… very creative plan to generate fuel from the humans.”

Starscream had a way of making the most obsequious, simpered little ‘master’ sound like a toxic insult, and the pointed pause before he said ‘creative’ seemed purpose-designed to infuriate—because it _was_, Megatron knew. He bared his teeth, glowering at the realisation. Starscream was intentionally trying to deflect his attention away from the matter, even though he had to know what Megatron had finally come to address. 

He was still talking, but Megatron did not hear it. 

With a deep, echoing snarl, he slammed one huge black fist into the flat of the door into Starscream’s quarters. Open and not locked into place, it crumpled around his hand with a squeal of tortured metal. 

Starscream flinched at the noise, which just made Megatron angrier with him. Starscream, flinch from _him_? When Megatron had been nothing but _patient_ and _permissive_ while he stumbled ludicrously around after an irrelevant recruit? 

A pink wash descended over his vision, swelling and falling in time with the thunder of his fuel pump. His cables strained and he wrenched his arm away from the busted door. It shuddered and groaned to release him. 

“_Megatron_,” Starscream squawked, fists clenched.

“_With Genesis_!” Megatron roared. 

The reaction this produced in Starscream was uncanny. The vents on his shoulders slammed closed into a protective wall of armour. His engine, already running nervous and hot, changed pitch entirely. Megatron took one step further into the room, and Starscream surged out of his seat. His wings flared wide to make him appear bigger, gleaming lines curving up and away from his frame.

Starscream's optics and biolights went bright with a rush of redirected fuel as his combat protocols came alive. His dark, pretty face contorted itself into an expression of towering fury. Back lit by his screen, he threw huge winged shadows upon the walls. 

Little wonder he terrorised the air corps. Not one of them was half so fierce. Even now, even trembling with the feedback of his own poorly-regulated emotional subsystem, it was hard for Megatron not to notice how well anger suited him.

“Genesis,” spat Starscream. “_Genesis_! Oh, yes, you’re _so concerned_ for Genesis, aren’t you? _Racing_ to his rescue, checking in with every scratch and dent… dashing around the ship like some pathetic juvenile… oh, yes, you take a very keen interest in that con’s welfare, don’t you, Megatron!” 

Was Starscream trying to imply that his own obsession with that useless jet was _Megatron’s_ fault? He hadn’t been here a cycle before Starscream had begun shirking his responsibilities to their cause—and to Megatron himself!--just to shove him down an incinerator!

Was Megatron supposed to have _allowed_ him to kill random recruits with impunity? He vented out unsteadily, feeling like he was clinging to his own temper with both hands. His emotional subsystem was moments away from hijacking his higher thought processes. He could _feel_ it, each new permissions request like a chisel in his processor, tapping away at his control. 

“Somebody ought to, since it seems his commanding officer’s interest is in _only one thing_—”

“_You try to pin this on me?_” Starscream’s voice turned shriller—and more punishing—than any of Genesis’s screams had been. Megatron’s audio centre cut out, blinking off and on again in an abrupt reset just to process the grating sound. 

Then: “Out,” said Starscream, pointing imperiously. 

Megatron did not even register the meaning of this _absurd statement_ for an astrosecond. When he did, his primary processing all... jolted. 

“_Excuse me_?” he asked incredulously, instead of what he knew he ought to have done—which was to _throw Starscream out by his wings_. Even though Starscream regularly tried to murder him, he had never once been so audacious as to presume he could _control_ Megatron before. He lacked the main strength to enforce any such effort, and—and it was _Megatron’s_ warship, besides!

Sheer astonishment actually cooled some of his temper. His vocaliser clicked off then on again. "I think you forget, Starscream, that—”

“_**OUT**_,” howled Starscream, cutting him off, at a pitch and a volume he could feel vibrating straight up his spinal column. It was physically painful to hear. 

Megatron twitched away from the noise. Was he _malfunctioning_? Surely, there was something wrong with—

Megatron’s audials didn’t even pick up the sound of Starscream’s chair tearing free. All he knew was that there was suddenly ballistic furniture hurtling towards his face. He smacked it aside effortlessly, sending it crashing. 

Behind it, he could see a crackle of pink light beneath Starscream’s cockpit and smell the burning of coolant, but he could hear nothing—not even his own shocked and hammering fuel pump or the swift rush of his own energon—over the sound of Starscream’s deranged screeching: “OUT!”

It was less pure shock that stalled him now and more the thought that Starscream might _actually_ be malfunctioning—and what was worse, he might be glitching himself all the way into a seizure right on the spot. That would be a lot more significant than anything painful but non-fatal that Megatron might do to him. 

“You barge in here, whining about that pathetic little slagheap drone—” his voice was cutting in and out with shrill, ugly, mechanical noises that Megatron did not even try to diagnose “—entirely your fault—”

Megatron had, at some point, taken a step back from Starscream’s hysterics, and that should not have mattered, since the Victory was Megatron’s ship and he could not be refused access to any part of it. But Starscream hooked his fingers around the dent in the metal and heaved the door along between them with a protesting squeal from its frame. 

“Get out,” he croaked—it was so comparatively quiet that Megatron’s ringing audials nearly didn’t catch it.

The door locked with a click. 

It was a futile gesture, of course. This was Megatron’s ship—and this was _Megatron’s second in command_, too, a thing he regarded as quite equally belonging to him. Was he supposed to respect access codes he could override in a moment after this... this—whatever this display had been?

And then even as he reached for the access panel, the door made a second noise. It was much louder than the first, and an attendant _thunk_ sounded from deeper in the wall. Megatron felt his fuel pump jump—as though he wasn’t already _leaking steam from his seams_ at this point—at the sound and quickly jabbed his override code into the panel by the door. 

An approval beep sounded immediately, but it was rapidly followed by the grinding noise of a door refusing to open. The panel flashed pink, access denied. 

Megatron ground his teeth. Starscream had hacked the door at some point, clearly, the vile, clever, self-aggrandising, _malfunctioning_ little monster. 

“And get that dent hammered out of your helm! You look ridiculous,” Starscream yelled. He sounded—a little more normal, if exhausted. 

Megatron’s engine gave an aggrieved rumble.

“Starscream!” he bellowed, banging on the door. Closed, the door was more secure in its frame. It shook, and the weak part near the damage Megatron had already inflicted dented further. The echoing report of his fist on the metal didn’t provoke Starscream into letting him in. 

There was a noise from inside. It was Starscream, still hovering close to the door. Megatron had damaged it enough that it didn’t seal properly, and he could hear through it. 

Megatron stepped back. He could break it down. Starscream did not get to decide when their discussion was over—Megatron did. He could take out the whole door. There’d be little left but smoke and vapour once it had tasted the might of Megatron’s fusion cannon. 

But to what end? If Starscream was really glitching, he needed a medic more than—or at least _before_—he needed a beating. If he wasn’t… 

Megatron scowled thunderously at the door, like it could answer him. Starscream was quiet behind it now, but the muffled hiss of his hot, internal mechanisms was too loud to suppress. 

Megatron’s helm was still throbbing oddly from his overindulgence the night previous and now, worse, Starscream’s demented screaming had set it to ringing like a bell—

_‘Get that dent hammered out of your helm,’_ Starscream had shouted to him through the door. He hadn't registered it before, but now—

Megatron frowned and reached carefully up to touch his helm again. He twitched when he finally found it, a small but sharp little dent. Where had that come from?

Distantly, he remembered Skywarp asking how his head felt when he’d emerged from recharge. He hadn’t been _that_ overenergised. Skywarp must have done something stupid, even though all Megatron could remember was a strange conversation about the raiding schedule. 

Megatron rubbed the sore spot on his head, still staring irritably at Starscream’s door. 

He could break it down. It would feel better to break it down and throw Starscream around, and Starscream certainly deserved it at the moment. He could risk damage to his ship—his _underwater_ ship, importantly—just to administer discipline to Starscream, who may feel himself provoked into another bout of hysterical howling, or he could stage a tactical retreat and get his helm fixed. 

He gave the door another dark look. Let Starscream hide away for now, then. He could afford to be patient. There was no energon dispenser in there. Starscream would have to emerge eventually. 

...and, now that he’d found the injury, what had once seemed like a general throb in his head had resolved into a sharp, irritating, localised pain. He really should get someone to beat the plates back into the right shape. Who knew what important thing inside his helm it might be crushing right now?

As he left and some of the confused anger drained slowly away, Megatron’s power systems began distributing resources more evenly again. His vents cracked back open to cool him. His engine slowed from its furious growl to a warm dull hum. 

Starscream may or may not have been glitching. Probably not, he thought, given the relative lucidity of his remark about the dent at the end there. But in either case his behaviour had been astonishingly erratic. It wasn’t strange to see Starscream in a rage—Starscream was at his most appealing in a wild battle rage, of course—but he was rarely so… overwrought… with it.

He hadn’t been thinking. He’d thrown a chair. A _chair_. Starscream had, at the very least, a null ray and a blaster. Why not fire a shot? He could hardly claim to fear retaliation from Megatron. That had never stopped him before. Megatron could only conclude that Starscream simply hadn’t thought to do it, too bent on immediate, physical, hands-on destruction. 

Megatron expected that kind of posturing and nonsense from Motormaster, not _Starscream._

He contemplated it all in hostile confusion as he took himself back down to the repair bay, where Hook and Scrapper—neither of them truly medics, but the closest that the Decepticons could do for now—reset the plating in his helm, removing the dent with a conspicuous lack of questioning. 

Starscream’s insinuations, in between all that screaming, were equally confusing. 

In what way could any of this be said to be Megatron’s fault? Was Starscream just trying to confuse the matter? Was all of this stalking and obsessive attention to Genesis just one ploy in a new scheme to defeat Megatron, after all?

That thought was a good one—it certainly _felt_ good, warming his laser core unpredictably. He very much wanted Starscream’s attention back, laser-focused right on Megatron where it belonged. But he wasn’t sure that it was quite right. If this was all part of some convoluted pot then Starscream was playing a very long game indeed. 

“Has he left his quarters yet?” Megatron demanded when he stepped out into the command centre. 

Soundwave did not ask who he was talking about or even look up. “Negative,” he said. 

Megatron grunted. He sat to check over Reflector’s report on an Autobot-human mining collaboration that bore a certain amount of watching, but his processor was by no means fully engaged. _Racing to his rescue_, Starscream had snarled. _You take a very keen interest in that con’s welfare._

‘In that con’s welfare,’ he thought, turning the idea around in his processor. As opposed to… whose welfare? Starscream’s? Absurd. Ridicul…

Except, of course, that Megatron knew Starscream to be an absurd, conceited creature. 

Perhaps he did not want Megatron to be concerned for his _welfare_, as that was truly a ridiculous proposition, but he had known Starscream to act out wildly if he felt more generally that Megatron was _ignoring_ him. 

Megatron stopped even pretending to read Reflector’s report, working instead to match up the timestamps in his memory files. It was true that although Starscream had taken an immediate dislike to Genesis, it had only become so obsessive once his first attempted murder had failed. Initially, Megatron had assumed this to be part of the cause on its own—Starscream did not particularly enjoy failure, after all. 

But what if he had simply… perceived Megatron’s intervention as _favouring_ Genesis?

Favouring Genesis _over Starscream._

Ah, thought Megatron. 

This puzzle fell open in his processor like a jewellery box to which he had finally found the key, revealing the prize within. 

“Soundwave,” he said, thoughtfully. Soundwave silently looked up. “Is it possible that this little—” he flicked his fingers dismissively, as though he hadn’t personally been thinking of nothing but this problem for days now “—temper tantrum of Starscream’s is a matter of..." jealousy? spite? "..._insecurity_?”

Soundwave was so silent for so long that Megatron thought he might not answer at all. 

Finally, he prompted him. “Soundwave?”

“…Soundwave… needs a moment,” Soundwave said, oddly strained.

His visor flicked off and then on again, slow and deliberate. Deep in his chest, a cassette was making some muffled rhythmic noise, which meant they were being very loud indeed for Megatron to hear them.

If _Soundwave_ started glitching too, Megatron was going to have to promote Skywarp. He watched on with some concern.

Finally, Soundwave seemed to really himself.

“Conclusion: probable,” he said with cautious neutrality. 

“Hmm.” Megatron relaxed again. He settled back into his seat, feeling quite pleased with his own cleverness in having worked it all out.

Genesis was not competition. And Starscream’s attention hadn’t even really strayed at all.

Poor Starscream, he thought indulgently.

For the first time in a week he felt… settled and content. He smiled a sharp little smile. All that racing around after Genesis, when all he really wanted was the reassurance of Megatron’s attention, for which he was much too proud to ask. Megatron’s pleasure in this idea was a selfish one: he liked thinking of the futile effort and attention to detail Starscream had put into the past week. The scrambling. The late nights. Even the screaming fury.

And then his smile widened until he was laughing, soft and low. 

No, Genesis wasn’t competition at _all_: he was a sporting cube, pumped full of thick, rich energon and released, all unknowing, upon a field of play with only two players.

Soundwave listened to Megatron’s soft, pleased laughter. Then he said, “Ravage: returns to report.” 

“Best go get him, then.” Megatron waved him off. There was absolutely no reason Ravage could not have returned to the command centre.

Nevertheless, Soundwave made himself scarce, ostensibly to go and mother his cassette.

Smiling still, Megatron sent a message to the Constructicons to investigate whether or not Starscream really was malfunctioning. He doubted it, but for this very singular moment in time he was feeling oddly fond of his selfish, conniving second in command. He didn’t want anything to happen to him today.

Then he scheduled a meeting with Genesis. It was time to find out what his behaviour toward Starscream had truly been. After all—something had had to provoke Starscream into that first attempt to accidentally-on-purpose incinerate him, hadn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By request this chapter covers Megatron's POV on Starscream's meltdown, so it overlaps with some stuff you've already read. It doesn't include an extra Genesis report, because it ends at roughly the same place in the time line (so Genesis is still doing what he was doing last chapter).


	10. STARSCREAM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Soundwave is, as usual, MVP.

Starscream’s engine was still running hot when he received a comm from the repair bay. The spiteful buzz of the unit brought him out of the stupefied, stressed loops into which he’d fallen after Megatron’s retreat from his room.

“Commander Starscream,” he answered it automatically.

Communications from the repair bay tended to mean that Skywarp had done… something, or otherwise that a member of his air corps had been severely damaged. 

“Hmm,” said Hook. “You don’t _sound_ like you’re having a critical malfunction.”

“...Is this some kind of moronic joke?” Starscream drawled. “Perhaps you find yourself with a great deal of excess time on your hands, but I assure you, I do not appreciate having important work interrupted by juvenile pranks.”

“Ah—no. Unfortunately,” said Hook, in a tone that suggested he very much would not be wasting any time on Starscream had he the choice, “it is not meant in jest. Megatron believes you suffered a glitch.” A short pause. “I doubt it. But I’d _so_ hate to be incorrect.” 

He’d so hate for Megatron to discover he was incorrect, Starscream mentally corrected.

While Hook was a conceited heap of scrap and did, in fact, absolutely hate to be incorrect, Starscream knew it would not bother him much if Starscream suffered a fatal glitch. 

It was rare that Megatron ordered anyone to the repair bay anyway: if someone wanted to quietly fall offline in some dim corner and not waste supplies, well, there were benefits to a stock of recycled parts for more dedicated Decepticon warriors, too. It all helped the cause, in its way.

Starscream glanced down at his dented seat, peeking out from between the gleaming white plates of his recently-polished thighs. It was possibly, he allowed, that his interaction with Megatron had not gone entirely to plan. Which was all Megatron’s own fault of course. But taken from an ungenerous view…

“Are you going to keep me waiting all cycle?” Hook synthesised an irritable noise. “I do have other projects of importance that require my personal attention…”

“Don’t let me keep you,” said Starscream, before this egocentric whining and posturing could really build up a head of steam. “I have better things to do than to indulge Megatron’s absurd paranoia.”

Then he cut the comm line.

He hadn’t gotten a single astrosecond of work done since Megatron left, of course, but Hook certainly didn’t need to know about that. With an effort of will he returned to at least staring at Megatron’s terrible plan on his console screen. 

It _was_ terrible. If Megatron was so determined to eke some energy out of the humans by subverting their own culture, they should at least consult with a human on the dumb thing… perhaps one of Swindle’s sleazy contacts? He felt his mouth curl in disgust at the very notion. 

This was the problem with plans that relied on taking energy from the humans via subterfuge instead of main force—yes, they tended to be lower risk and perfectly Decepticon, but one had to understand the humans to execute them. 

And humans were… They were a lot like Cybertronians, if Cybertronians had been made of rotting flesh that rarely even lasted a century. And also damp. Starscream shuddered to contemplate. They—

The unique sound of a warp drive interrupted Starscream’s thought process.

“Hey Scr—huh, what happened to your chair?” Skywarp was loud in the otherwise quiet room.

Starscream looked down at the busted chair again. Cautiously, he shifted his weight forward, past the tipping point of his wings. The chair wobbled unsteadily onto a new, equally uneven leg. He scowled down at it. 

“Megatron broke it, that oaf,” he said shortly. “What do you want?” 

“Oh… I’m here to take you to the repair bay,” Skywarp said, apparently oblivious to the impact this statement would have. He grabbed one of Starscream’s wings and warped them both even as Starscream’s engine went from an idling stressed hum to a loud snarl. 

His optics flooded suddenly with the brightness of the repair bay and he shuttered them angrily. Their warp was so precise that Starscream’s perch on his busted seat transitioned to sitting on a medical berth in the repair bay with only a single confused jolt. 

“Am I good or what?” Skywarp crowed. Starscream took a vicious swipe at him, sending him scrambling away.

“Ah,” said Hook’s oily and unwelcome voice. Starscream’s wings twitched and hiked up higher at the sound of it. “Finally.”

Actually, the repair bay, when he looked around it, was not just brightly-lit, but also very full of large, green and purple frames. Even Scavenger had somehow been coerced into the room, watching attentively instead of digging about in the muck for scrap to bring back to his combiner team like a needy turbohound…

His optics fell on Scrapper, who was watching him gravely. No questions about who had organised for him to be so... boxed in.

Starscream was well and truly surrounded by Constructicons on the repair berth where he sat. The heavy, luridly-painted ground vehicles towered over him. 

Skywarp disappeared just as soon Starscream’s attention wandered. He heard the sound of warping and didn’t bother to look for him. It was futile to flee. Starscream would not forget. And Skywarp couldn’t hide from his own trine mate forever.

Hook’s approach was the opposite of stealthy, but Starscream still twitched when he was grabbed. He yanked his arm away from him petulantly, and for no practical reason. Starscream wasn’t likely to fight a whole combiner team to avoid one unnecessary check up. 

“Don’t be _tedious_,” Hook snapped, reclaiming the limb to override an access panel and plug in. 

Starscream pulled a face. The feeling of having his surface code and historical logs scanned was never a comfortable one. 

Hook muttered to himself as he worked. Starscream opened his vents and released a huge sigh of recycled air, then slouched, resigned. He let his brain module fill with background processing. 

It _was_ rare for Megatron to order someone to the repair bay. More likely, he would order someone to Shockwave’s eerily silent laboratory on Cybertron for an ‘experimental procedure’… 

So why had he given the order to torment Starscream with something as benign as a check up?

He couldn’t have actually thought that Starscream might be _glitching_, that was ridiculous.

_…Megatron_ was ridiculous, sometimes—often even. 

Perhaps he might have gotten it in his addled, undersized head that Starscream’s totally reasonable response to his _provocations_ was a malfunction. But that meant nothing on its own. Why would he demand it be _treated_ instead of taking the opportunity, as he so often did, to humiliate Starscream and remind him of what Megatron so incorrectly presumed was his place? 

Starscream’s idling processes began digging through the implications, dissecting and discarding possibilities as Hook hummed to himself. 

“Your emotional subsystem is showing signs of heat damage,” he said, “and you need coolant. Which I imagine you already knew. There was no need to waste my time like this—” and on he went.

Mixmaster fished out a canister of coolant from somewhere in the back of the repair bay.

Starscream scowled. “As if this is where I wanted to spend _my_ time?” 

He snatched the canister out of the air when Mixmaster tossed it to Hook—they might have been bigger, but he would always be more agile—and ignored the filthy look Hook shot his team mate. 

He had to crack open his plating to fit the nozzle, but the sudden flood of soft, soothing cool fluids made Starscream shudder. He hadn’t actually realised how much of his existing supply he’d used up. Perhaps he _had_ tapped out his frame’s cooling capacity when Megatron had been so unreasonable earlier. 

It was while he was finally beginning to relax under the influx of coolants (enough that he didn’t even mention the unholy racket Bonecrusher had begun to make in another repair room) that it occurred to Starscream that this _was_ a waste of his time—and perhaps that was the point. 

To waste Starscream’s time. 

To cause a _distraction_. 

Starscream’s optics lit up a brilliant red as they narrowed. Scavenger, quite accidentally caught in their glare, froze. 

What was Megatron up to? Was there something Starscream was being intentionally kept from? A personnel meeting? A planning session? Another infernal but critical report from Shockwave? 

Megatron’s schedule wasn’t exactly posted on the general comms, but Starscream and Soundwave had access as required—unless sections were marked private. 

Scowling furiously, Starscream accessed it now. He expected to see a section market private, blocked off, mysterious and inaccessible and destined to drive his processor to running in ever-expanding loops, or else a meeting with Shockwave and Soundwave that he had ‘accidentally’ not been made party to. (For it was _just_ like Megatron to try to punish Starscream’s completely proportionate outburst under _significant provocation_ by curbing his influence.)

He did not find either of these.

“Starscream!” Hook twitched, still examining his read outs. “I cannot imagine what you think you’re doing, but if you don’t slow the acceleration, you certainly _will_ glitch something!” 

Starscream was not listening. Megatron had filled up an entire joor of his schedule—plainly listed, open for anyone with access to see—on a single, one-on-one meeting with _Genesis_. 

He slithered off the repair berth and twisted the canister free. 

“Starsc—ouch!” Hook jerked when his cable was also yanked out. His engine gave a startled snarl of pain, distorting his voice briefly. “_Starscream!_” he bellowed. 

Starscream saw one big green hand reaching for him and smacked it out of the way with the half-empty canister. When he let it go, Hook fumbled not to spill it all over the floor, and Starscream took the opportunity to exit the repair bay before he recovered. 

“Why didn't any of you stop him?” Hook demanded shrilly.

“Why bother?” he heard Long Haul wonder loudly behind him. “You said he was fine. I don’t want to baby sit him all cycle, do you?”

"He's only got half the canister," Hook grumbled.

He didn’t hear anything more, because he was already stalking towards Megatron’s assigned meeting room. It was a boxy, uninteresting space off the command centre, which contained only a large a battered table and a display screen. 

There were lots of things they could be using that table for, Starscream thought in a crackling, bitter rage. His fresh coolant was already being put to the test as his frame growled like it was trying to take off.

His emotional subsystem was overwhelming his primary processor, and all he could think was that Megatron had _gone out of his way_ to make sure Starscream was otherwise occupied. And for what? So he could have a totally innocent meeting with one of Starscream’s own subordinates? 

The emotional subsystem was now vying for control of his onboard weaponry, and Starscream was not trying very hard to stop it. 

He stormed right past Ramjet in the command centre, whose red wings twitched violently at his passing. He made no effort to stop him. 

Then Starscream got to the meeting room, growled his engines at the closed door and blasted the access panel: **BOOM.** It went up in a crackle of electricity and a cloud of sparks. The lights in the command centre flickered briefly before secondary protocols rerouted their power.

Starscream didn’t wait for anyone to respond before he kicked the door open through the sparks and the smoke.

Megatron and Genesis were indeed inside, alone, together, and Genesis froze at Starscream’s dramatic entry. The table had been knocked aside and now lay askew, and Genesis, looking even worse in the metal than he had on camera, clutched a blaster—with its muzzle aimed _right at Megatron._

“Starscream,” said Megatron, in the steady way that usually preceded a towering fury—which was stupid, because he certainly had no _right_. 

If anyone was to be furious, it was him! Starscream! Starscream was the one who should be enraged. And, oh, he _was_.

Megatron's expression wasn't completely readable. “That door was not locked,” he said.

Starscream wasn’t listening. His optics zoomed in on the blaster in Genesis’s frozen—frozen with _guilt_, no doubt—hand. Righteous rage filled him, bubbling up from his tanks to thunder in his fuel pump and wash his visual field bright, energon-pink.

“_Oh, you’ll let **HIM**_ shoot you?” he shrieked."_Him?_"

****

His voice cut through the air, flat and hard, the last syllable ringing in their audials.

****

There was a short pause.

****

“What,” said Megatron, so flatly it barely even sounded like a question.

****

“What?” Genesis repeated. Then, _rudely_, he did not wait for Starscream to continue. He let out a noise of tremendous anger and frustration. “No, I don’t care. You Decepticons are all _glitching out of your brain modules._”

****

Then he fired wildly upon Starscream, who squawked and dove out of the way and behind the dubious cover of the table, feeling the sensors in his wing sizzle as he did. 

****

The blasts scorched the walls, dispersing in a flash of light that streamed strange, ugly shadows across the room.

****

The world suddenly smelled like energy weapon discharge, and several battlefield protocols triggered simultaneously. Starscream’s armour shuddered in response, slamming closed. His fans roared to their highest setting.

****

“I don’t care,” Genesis was repeating loudly, voice shaking almost as hard as his hands, “_I don’t care!_ MEGATRON!” The blaster swung back to Megatron before Starscream had even recovered from his dive for safety. “Your reign of terror ends no—hhhk!”

****

His voice dissolved under the sound of another energy blast discharging, buzzing through the air. It was the familiar sound of a null ray.

****

Genesis hit the floor with a heavy, metallic _thud_. 

****

Not quite as heavy as a block of solid osmium alloy, Starscream reflected in that calm, empty, battlefield place in his processor. But then, few things were.

****

He peered over his wing to find Soundwave silhouetted in the open doorway, holding a null ray of his own. His boxy, angular frame was lit up on one side by the sparking of the access panel that Starscream had destroyed on his way in.

****

“Soundwave?” Starscream said blankly. Was _Soundwave_ glitching now?

****

“Ah, Soundwave,” said Megatron. “Excellent timing.”

****

Oh, well, of course, when Starscream interrupted it was ‘the door wasn’t locked’, but Soundwave showed up brandishing a gun and it was ‘excellent timing’? There was gratitude for you. 

****

“Genesis: Autobot spy,” Soundwave reported, putting up his weapon and striding over to Genesis’s still form on the floor, where he began to restrain him while he was still well and truly knocked out. 

****

“I had suspected,” Megatron said, which, _pit slag_ he had— 

****

“You mean you suspected when he _pulled a blaster on you_,” Starscream sneered over the activity of his own fans. He hovered next to the overturned table and tried to simultaneously shunt his emotional processes into background processing (where they belonged) and figure out how to take control of the situation so he could torment his own subordinate. Genesis’s second wild shot had singed one of his wings, and it ached and twitched at his back. “Before that your only interest in him was in _chasing his tail lights_.”

****

The vulgar slang—grounder slang, even, he felt strange even vocalising it—should not have made Megatron smile, but it did. It was a sharp, pleased, knowing little smile that put Starscream’s wings on edge. 

****

Soundwave went on with his report as though Starscream hadn’t said a thing. “Decepticon brand: does not discolour under heat.” 

****

He bent down to scrape gently at, and then entirely remove, Genesis’s brands. 

****

Starscream paused in looking for another accusation to throw at Megatron which would finally wipe that knowing little smile off his face. That was right. They’d all been in plenty of scrapes and explosions before—and nobody’s brands had ever burnt black. They were designed, to put it mildly, to endure. 

****

How had none of them noticed after Starscream had shoved his wing in that incinerator?

****

Again Megatron’s attention shifted from Starscream back down to Genesis. He came closer to the downed jet, steps thumping on the floors and shadow looming over him. 

****

“Go on,” rumbled Megatron. For once, given his impassive face and ominous tone in his deep, hollow voice, Starscream could not envy the object of his attention. 

****

“Report intercepted during patrol,” Soundwave added. A slightly fuzzy clip of Genesis’s voice played: “Flying patrol gave me access to patrol routes. Still no raid schedule. Asked Skywarp about it before I left—he didn’t say anything.” 

****

On the floor, Genesis was beginning to recover from the null ray blast. He cringed, which was a much more reliable signifier of his guilt from Starscram’s perspective. 

****

“Frag,” he croaked.

****

“Surveillance is not limited to the Victory,” Soundwave informed him, somewhat redundantly. 

****

Megatron rumbled out a cruel little laugh, which was a sound that did not in any way bode well for Genesis.

****

“Ravage confirmed Autobots received reports.” Soundwave explained. “Lastly: Shockewave reports data tampering affecting specific personnel file only.”

****

“We weren’t due to receive a report from Shockwave,” Megatron said thoughtfully. 

****

Soundwave paused. After a moment’s hesitation, he said: “Confirmation necessary.”

****

It didn’t sound like it had been necessary, actually, but Starscream supposed Soundwave did like to cover all bases…

****

Megatron hummed, deep and thick in the air, but he said nothing further on that point—not in front of Genesis, anyway. “Take him to the brig, Soundwave. We’ll have a number of questions for Genesis. And then, if we like the answers, perhaps we’ll see what the Autobots are willing to trade us for their lost pet.”

****

His optics brightened, red like hellfire, and then he smiled a sharp, narrow smile down at Genesis, at his feet. “Or perhaps we won’t, after all.”

****

Starscream knew which outcome _he_ wanted. “He might have sensitive information,” he said quickly, even as Soundwave was manoeuvring him back to his feet. His hand hovered on his blaster, but it looked like Soundwave did not immediately need any assistance. “Execution would be safest.”

****

“Indeed it would,” Megatron agreed. His optics never left Genesis. 

****

“Like _slag_ it would!” hissed Genesis. “What ‘sensitive information’ could I _possibly_ tell anyone? None of you have done any fragging work since I’ve been here!”

****

Starscream made a loud squawk of offence, hands clenching and unclenching around his own weapon. But Genesis was an Autobot captive now, and he could not be casually killed before questioning. 

****

Instead he commed Ramjet and demanded that he assist Soundwave with moving the captive. He got confirmation and, after a moment, saw the dull flash of Ramjet’s red and blue paint job in the corridor. Better to get one of his own seekers in there and maintain _some_ control over the situation.

****

Their footsteps faded, leaving Starscream in the meeting room with its overturned furniture, sparking door panel and scorched walls, clutching his blaster—and alone with Megatron.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we will see more reports again from Genesis next time, promise
> 
> but you should know that my original outline had him getting his head blown off by Soundwave in this chapter and it is only through the "oh my god, poor Hot Wings," commentary of readers that he lived.


	11. GENESIS (and then Megatron)--

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megatron has a good cycle. Genesis has a rather poor one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note—starts with an interrogation scene. Pretty mild but might cause some discomfort.

“They aren’t going to trade anything for me,” Genesis said, watching with some dismay as his internal systems processed signals without any input or control from his own brain module.

The cell was lit too brightly and the walls were close and dark, with bars between Genesis and the heavy doors. Genesis could not move. Parts of his cranial plating were missing, and this sent critical errors cascading through his processors, only to be rapidly dismissed by Soundwave as he rummaged through the files. 

Soundwave remained silent, neither interested in nor responsive to Genesis’s assessment. Instead of any response, Genesis got a series of harsh neural locks inserting themselves right into his coding, along with the very unpleasant feeling of Wheeljack’s thinky-jammer being removed from the back of his neck. It was designed to be semi-permanent only, so it didn’t compromise any major energon lines when it came fee, but he could feel the breaking circuitry. 

Genesis’s tanks and fuel valves all tensed like they wanted him to purge. Another error flashed up, also dismissed by Soundwave. He grunted.

A moment later, Soundwave’s deeper scan began, a murky series of protocols sinking deep into Genesis’s processor and riffling through the files that fell outside of immediate conscious processing. 

“You won’t get anything at all for me if I’m… ngh, damaged,” he managed through the neural lock now keeping him from voluntary movement. 

Soundwave continued to ignore him. He pulled up and discarded recent files with dizzying speed and brutal efficiency. His processing capacity far outstripped most mechanisms—everyone knew it, that was why he was the Decepticon third in command and one of the more celebrated comms officers of the whole war. But it meant that he was pushing the limits of Genesis’s comparatively more lightweight systems. 

Genesis’s helm felt like it was on fire, and he couldn’t even shut off his optics to stop the light. Soundwave’s cables were buried in his cranial circuitry, controlling all.

He encouraged Genesis’s thoughts toward his recent stay among the Decepticons, and Genesis’s process spat out memories and confused conjecture, uncontrolled and too fast. 

_He put a hole in my wing_. 

_Two separate mechs have asked me what I did to get Screamer all fragged off—_

_Starscream spent all day murder-staring at me again._

There was a brief reprieve, dizzying in its sudden absence of pain. Genesis’s fans hitched audibly and his plating shuddered wide open and closed again. It didn’t last long. When he resumed, Soundwave was more focused on how Genesis remembered Starscream in all his wild, moody, frankly insane glory. Telling him that Genesis wasn’t here to sabotage Starscream seemed unlikely to convince him, so he let Soundwave dig up all that information for himself. 

It wasn’t like he had a choice. 

_...Screamer and Megatron were making murder eyes at each other… violent and erratic… don’t know how they’ve ever gotten anything done at all._

_Starscream gets crazier ever time I see him._

_…Air Commander personally despises every strut and nut and bolt in your frame for **no reason**._

_Starscream is what the humans call ‘an absolute fucking psychopath’. _

_Asked me four times what I’d done to slag off the Air Commander—_

Soundwave’s insides where whirring away with data by the time he finally let Genesis rest. He unhooked the cables from his helm and replaced at least some of his cranial casing, just enough to stop the worst and most persistent errors. 

When Genesis finally saw his face again—such as it was, anyway, protected by both a blast mask over its lower half and an optical visor, he looked nothing so much as… puzzled. 

That was rich, considering he had access to every one of Genesis’s reports and most of his thoughts. 

“What,” he growled. It emerged slurred and staticky from his vocaliser, the result of a mix of things that Soundwave had done to him—none of which, he now realised, came even close to the nonsense Starscream and Megatron had inflicted. 

Still, Soundwave hesitated, as though to enter into any actual conversation with Genesis might itself be unwise. 

Finally, after a long silence broken only by the shudder of Genesis’s fast-cycling fans, he said: “Starscream’s motives are… unclear.”

It was sort of a question, and sort of… not.

Genesis regarded Starscream as a mechanism who did not need motives, unless they were perhaps things like petty, egocentric spite—in his own case he had not the faintest clue what had actually caused the unstable Air Commander to go off the rails.

As far as Genesis could recall, he had made one, very polite, critique of his absurd flight standards—that they were exceedingly difficult for the triple changers. It had been very gentle compared to the whining that Skywarp was already doing that day, but Starscream’s regard had fallen upon him like a giant block of osmium alloy and never lifted since. 

In Genesis’s very personal experience, Starscream just… did things. Violently. 

“Holy Primus, yes,” he said. Emotion made his voice stronger and clearer, forcing his overclocked processors to lurch back into action. He flinched. 

Soundwave’s internal circuitry hummed as he processed, but he did not comment further. 

“Genesis: allotted half-ration. It will be brought to you,” he advised him, and left. 

Rumble was dispatched to watch over him within moments. 

“Wow, Autobots are big dumb-dumbs, huh?” he said. 

Genesis didn’t bother answering this, feeling that, firstly, he had an incredible headache and would rather like to close his eyes and not talk, and secondly, there was no engagement on that topic that would presently prove him wrong. 

In another three hours, Skywarp arrived with his half ration. The outer door creaked open and Rumble didn’t even look up from whatever he was doing on his data pad—playing a game, from the transmission noises. 

“Hey, Hot Wings,” Skywarp opened, looking relaxed right outside the bars. He looked battered, like all the seekers in the Decepticon army, but like he’d found the time to recently get cleaned up.

“It’s Genesis,” said Genesis flatly.

“Sure it is.” Skywarp tossed his head back and laughed. Then the sound cut off abruptly. He settled and regarded him for a long moment with the quarter-cube—a half ration by Decepticon rationing standards, of course—in hand. “You know, Hot Wings—”

“_Genesis._”

Skywarp continued without any indication that he might have been interrupted: “—you’ve been the reason I haven’t seen a raiding schedule in _weeks_?” 

“What?” 

Skywarp leaned in, so close Genesis could hear the sound of the air moving through his fans hitting the bars. 

He waited until Genesis’s optics flicked down to the half-ration of semi-clean energon in his hand, glowing softly even in the too-bright lighting of the brig. 

Then he unceremoniously brought the cube to his face and drank Genesis’s ration. 

“_Bye_,” he said savagely. 

Skywarp disappeared with a pop. 

Genesis was alone with the sound of Rumble cackling outside his cell. 

“Oh, man. Classic!” laughed the minicon. 

Genesis exhaled slowly through his vents. Would the cons just kill him already?

* * *

Once Soundwave had left with their prisoner, Starscream whirled to Megatron.

“Megatron!” he began immediately. “You can’t be thinking of allowing that—that little _retrorat_ to continue functioning!”

Megatron regarded him, blank-faced and critical. 

There was something about knowing that all of his recent provocations had only been in the pursuit of Megatron’s personal attention that made them much easier to tolerate. A tolerant Megatron was a rare and strange thing, but despite all odds, it had been a good cycle: a spy had been discovered before much damage could be done, they had an Autobot prisoner through which to acquire whatever concessions Soundwave could wring from their soft-sparked Autobot adversaries, and Megatron had discovered that his proud first lieutenant could be driven out of his mind with jealousy the very moment he feared Megatron might not be _paying attention_ to him, a fact that seemed to open up possibilities of near-limitless potential. 

Gone were Megatron’s concerns about Genesis’s intentions—it was immediately clear that he had been trying to capture Starscream’s attention in some way, as part of what was no doubt some cowardly Autobot plot. And Starscream, spectacularly contrary and bad tempered as always, had proven to be more than the silly little spy could easily handle. 

Absent, too, were all worries Megatron had nursed about his own place in Starscream’s regard. His ego did away with them at the first hint of an alternative—it did not matter if Megatron had no wings, if his frame was hard, bulky and unluxurious (quite the opposite of a sleek creature like Genesis). He knew he came first to Starscream, as he always had and likely always would—as an adversary, a challenge, a partner, a lord. The role changed, but _that_ didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was thinking of Megatron, and not of someone else.

Now, assured to his satisfaction that he still held pride of place, looming in his throne to rule over every stray thought in Starscream’s magnificently convoluted little mind, Megatron did find himself disposed to be tolerant, after all. 

…tolerant with Starscream, anyway.

And perhaps only up to a point. Starscream, rarely boring, did excel at finding brand new boundaries to test, even after all these orns. 

“Starscream,” he warned in a low, booming growl. “Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot think.” 

He could see it when Starscream’s threat assessment protocols registered his approach, one heavy step at a time, because they made his shining, angular wings stiffen. 

Starscream retreated a step. 

“Megatron! That’s not what—I’m not suggesting that at all!” His voice grew increasingly shrill as Megatron’s steady, measured steps backed him up further and further, right into the scorched corner of the room. “I meant simply that it would be—er—inadvisable—”

“It would be inadvisable to sacrifice the advantage of a prisoner to assuage your overinflated ego, Starscream,” Megatron rumbled at him, low and deep and hollow.

Starscream’s wing hit the damaged wall with a scrape. Megatron saw the realisation of his unfortunate situation flash across his dark, pretty face. Something in Megatron adored that nervous flicker of emotion. It was not quite fear, not yet, but a distinct anxiety. It was really quite unfair: Starscream could be a capable officer and was always brilliant close range air support, but in a confined space—like their ships had been for millions of years now—Megatron outclassed him in every possible way. 

“Poor Starscream,” he laughed softly, which seemed only to unsettle his nervous commander more. The confusion on his face was a beautiful work of vulnerability. 

Megatron pushed him flat to the wall with one enormous hand upon his cockpit. He twitched in surprise—and surely a bit in fear, for though his inflated pride would not allow him to admit it, he wasn’t so stupid he could feel none, with Megatron’s huge dark hand on the glass. The flats of both wings clattered on the wall. Starscream’s fans buzzed quietly. 

“Megatron,” he started nervously.

“Shh.” 

Since Starscream had never met an order he was naturally inclined to follow, Megatron raised his hand up to his throat with the shivering chime of metal upon metal. 

With his hand right over Starscream’s vocaliser, he didn’t try to speak. 

“My poor, scheming, conniving, traitorous little electroviper,” he murmured fondly, leaning in just far enough for the smell of Starscream’s polish to catch in his vents and flood his senses. The plates and cables under his hand were smooth and shiny, additional testament to recent polishing. The air purred out of him, warmed by his internal mechanics. 

Starscream’s left wing jerked, _scree-ee-ee_, on the wall. “I am not—”

He stopped when Megatron rubbed his thumb over the delicate plates covering that vocaliser. 

They were close enough to be venting in and out together now, sharing the same frame-hot air between them. Starscream made Megatron feel enormous, deceptively dainty under his hand, even though in his higher processors Megatron knew, intellectually, that he could trade blows with pretty much anything and still stagger away from the fight.

But here, boxed in against this wall, he was encompassed in the shadow of Megatron’s larger frame, cloaked within it like a secret. 

“How it must have haunted you to be thwarted in your efforts to _deactivate_ him.” Megatron laughed again, so soft it was little more than an amused circuit-deep hum, felt more than heard. Starscream’s fans changed setting, either anxious or excited. It was hard to say.

Starscream scowled fiercely up at him. Even the threat of Megatron’s hand on his throat couldn’t keep his mouth shut for long: “If _you_ had not—”

Megatron squeezed until his vocaliser gave a warning crackle. Starscream stopped, but his optics flared, crimson and terrible and lovely.

“Yes,” said Megatron. “If _I_ had not. Did you think he had my regard? That whimpering, cowering thing?” He thought of Genesis, crying on his medical berth, begging _please, please_, wing punctured and burnt the whole way through, and almost laughed at the absurdity of it.

Starscream, unable to say anything in his own defence, only bared his teeth in a snarl. He also looked away. There was a soft click as the vents on his shoulders opened, one last degree wider. 

Megatron smiled. Poor Starscream. Poor, resentful, violent, scheming, lovely Starscream. He leaned closer—close enough for his voice to vibrate against the top of Starscream’s audial sensor. 

“Did you feel I was… neglecting you, Starscream?” he asked.

He knew the answer, too—in defiance of all reason, Starscream felt himself entitled to the full weight of Megatron’s attention. Megatron was not yet sure quite how he felt about this, but for now it was sufficiently flattering that he couldn’t help but indulge it.

The more thought Megatron had dedicated to Genesis, the wilder Starscream had become, culminating in that mean little stunt with the purgative. By Primus, Starscream was a spiteful, vicious thing. Megatron could not have stopped smiling if he’d tried. 

Just as Megatron knew this to be true, he predicted that Starscream would not admit to it—but he did not have to, as the moment the last syllable of his name escaped Megatron’s vocaliser he shuddered from the tips of his wings to his feet, a very quiet, very telling little rattle of shuffling plates and recalibrating sensors. The only noise he made was a quiet grunt. 

Magatrn’s free hand fell upon his waist, skimming the cherry red plate of his hips. He really was polished to a shine, although where he’d found the time in his busy schedule of attempted murder and eviscerating Megatron’s plans was anyone’s guess. Starscream’s hand landed on his arm, and he clutched but did not push him away. 

“I can’t imagine what you’re trying to imply,” Starscream said. Megatron could feel the thrum of his voicaliser beneath his hand.

“Do not imagine me foolish,” he warned him. Starscream’s waist, strong and hard and perfectly curved for Megatron’s hand, stiffened beneath his grip, cables beneath the plating tensing for motion.

“I don’t—”

“I’m sure,” said Megatron—dotingly, indulgently, with utterly unbearable magnanimity. He felt overcome with an absurd fondness.

He leaned down for a kiss.

For just a moment Starscream went utterly still and did not respond at all. Megatron, too sure of himself to contemplate rejection, instead felt a stab of delight and pride in having taken him by surprise. 

A split-second later, Starscream melted into him like hot iron. 

Much more satisfying than the circuitry in his mouth lighting up with shared delight, was that Starscream did allow it so willingly and easily. He opened his mouth to Megatron and allowed his tongue to stroke carefully at the circuits beneath the soft plating inside. 

Starscream was so difficult so often that this easy surrender felt like winning something unexpected for free, like a victory—and Megatron _loved_ winning. This relaxed, open, sighing, willing thing that had become of his famously—_notoriously_—combative commander was strange and intoxicating from the very start. He felt giddy in this easy victory.

Starscream made a thin, luxurious noise against the pressure of Megatron’s hand on his neck and pressed in closer. His fingers scraped against Megatron’s heavy armour. His hands drew energy through his circuitry with unerring precision. 

Megatron’s plating shuddered, cracks opening and closing. Megatron squeezed his neck—gently, carefully, just enough to make Starscream’s fans stutter in a mix of fear and excitement—and when he let go at last, Starscream’s hands clung to him, no longer sure and caressing.

“Come to my rooms,” Megatron said, rubbing his fingers over the ridges of one tall vent, across a fitfully spinning turbine, down his waist. He could feel the tremble in the plating and could feel the circuitry coming alive beneath his hand.

“Yes,” said Starscream, immediately and without hesitation. His voice, for once, was absent the shrieking pitch it took on under stress. And then he didn’t even complain—not right then, anyway—when Megatron manhandled him through the door and sped him through the command centre. 

Yes. A good cycle, indeed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trivia about cybertronian wildlife:  
retrorat: canon term  
electroviper: definitely not a canon term anywhere
> 
> This fic grew another chapter because I realised the scenes planned were actually longer than anticipated. Oops. :<
> 
> Lastly, here's my tragic social media story: I quit tumblr about eighteen months ago. But I have found that despite the site being barely even functional, it turns out that there's no alternative that I find better because I really like some of tumblr's mostly-working functions. :( :( I have therefore gone and made (remade) a fandom content tumblr at [cardio-vore](https://cardio-vore.tumblr.com/) where you may find me.


	12. GENESIS (and Starscream, and Skywarp)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skywarp finally gets to eat.

“One gigacube—a _giga_cube?” Genesis interrupted himself. Again. “Soundwave, come on, you’ll be lucky to get more than a megacube—” 

“Read,” Soundwave said. 

Genesis creaked his vents open to sigh, deeply and pointedly, at the recording camera. As it was freezing in the cells, this was warmth he couldn’t really afford to lose. And he probably shouldn’t antagonise Soundwave, either—but he figured, if Soundwave was trying to negotiate concessions for the Autobots to take him back, he couldn’t damage Genesis too much more than Megatron and Starscream had already managed.

Genesis more or less assumed this meant he could talk back with impunity, within reasonable limits—unlike with Starscream or Megatron, over the past week…

In several ways, despite days of the anxiety of being a captured prisoner in what passed for Decepticon care, this was less dangerous than just being one of Starscream’s subordinates. 

“Read,” said Soundwave implacably. This time he gestured with the electroprod currently held in his hand: long length of metal with wicked circuitry wrapped around one end, which when touched to someone’s plating, would usually transmit more charge through a smaller space than could handle it. It rarely did much damage, but the pain of small circuits burning out was… a lot. 

The thing about Soundwave, of course, was that he was a lot more stable and a lot less emotive than any of the Decepticons’ other commanders—with the possible exception of Shockwave, who Genesis had only seen in passing and never spoken with—and it made it harder to tell when pushing boundaries became crossing boundaries. 

“Fine, fine.” Genesis looked down at the data pad again. “Non-participation in defence of select Earth territories, including, uh… looks like most of the southern hemisphere and the middle east—_why_ do you guys keep singling out those oil fields—”

Zap. 

“Ow!”

“Read.”

Through his teeth, Genesis read. “Non-intervention in the use of sentient local life-forms for the purpose of acquiring resources where no overt intention to eradicate those life forms exists… are you talking about human slavery? Is this _slaver_—”

“Read.” Soundwave raised the prod. Genesis twitched. 

“I’m just _saying_—”

This time when he was shocked, Soundwave held the prod there while Genesis shouted. One quick stab with an electroprod hurt, but holding it down there was an entirely different experience: the wicked pain suddenly came with burning systems, unpredictable errors, fuel evaporation that made him dizzy, and fuel pump disregulation that took long minutes to recover from. 

“Autobot Genesis,” Soundwave said, while Genesis himself sagged, wings shaking, vents heaving. Smoke streamed from the seams of his armour. “Prisoner exchange without transmission: impossible.”

Genesis opened his mouth to let smoke stream from its vents, too. 

After a moment of silence, he pointed at the data pad. Genesis glanced at the electroprod. There was a long pause. Then he read dully on: 

“All documentation on any human-Autobot collaborative works, especially regarding communications, robotics and nanotechnology. Prompt return of materials salvaged from the Nemesis and all Earth-based Decepticon facilities. Or, alternative to all of the above, delivery of the World Energy Chip into Decepticon care.”

The list of demands was ridiculous, and not likely to be supported by anybody that Genesis could think of. Not even Optimus Prime, who was famously attached to his people. Certainly not by Prowl. Even Ratchet would willingly sacrifice one lone soldier for the supplies that those currently in his repair bay needed to continue functioning. 

Genesis handed the data pad back. His restraints clinked gently. 

Soundwave subspaced it and said, “Ravage: transmit demands.”

_Good luck with that_, thought Genesis snidely. 

Soundwave turned his blank gaze on him, evidently having “heard” the pointed thought—but he didn’t say anything in response. 

* * *

“It’s too low an opening offer,” Starscream said critically, floors away. He was sprawled out on top of Megatron, watching the transmission from his own data pad. He had magnanimously tilted its screen so Megatron could also see it if he propped up his head. 

Megatron’s thick fingers were tracing unconscious patterns up and down Starscream’s shoulder vent. Starscream wasn’t certain he knew he was doing it, but it felt nice and he chose not to tell him. 

The berth was… “rumpled” might have been too kind, as they were both strong and enthusiastic. Two of Starscream’s ports still throbbed gently with the lingering ghosts of charge from Megatron’s massive generators. He’d pulled the data pad out of his subspace because he did not want to move too precipitously and discover that his knees wouldn’t hold him right in front of Megatron. The big idiot would never let him forget it. 

The same big idiot now made a considering hum, vibrating his chest plates against Starscream’s canopy. 

“It has to be low enough that they know it’s a true negotiation,” he said finally.

“But all those behavioural conditions that they can agree to and then ignore,” Starscream complained.

A huge hand stroked firmly own his back, metal ringing softly on metal. The sensation felt good. Starscream made a satisfied noise. _Hnnngh_. He’d finally found a good use for Megatron. And what a use it was, too. 

“They won’t. The soft-sparked likes of Optimus Prime won’t go back on his word, we’ll get the energon… and the documentation. It won’t be ‘evil’ to give up human technology. But they’ll never agree to non-intervention—that’s what they’ll argue on. They’re not… like us.”

“Idiots,” huffed Starscream. There wasn’t much bite to it. How could there be, when he was trying very hard to keep his optics open and not roll shamelessly into Megatron’s overwhelmingly strong hands? He arched, just a little—just enough to be, hm, encouraging. 

For once, Megatron got the message without it having to be _spelled out_ for him. He pressed his fingers in harder, gently compressing the plating and transmitting sensation through the circuitry beneath it. Starscream’s engine gave a startled purr. 

This situation had worked itself out very much in Starscream’s favour, as far as he was concerned.

Genesis, that little runt, had proven as untrustworthy as Starscream had suspected all along—his superior instincts were never wrong—and Megatron’s attention was right back with Starscream where it belonged. Any thoughts of Genesis were now as a playing piece upon a board, useful in the pursuit of Decepticon success… and nothing more. 

He stretched happily, indulging both the new little aches of his frame and the long, hard, wonderful strokes of Megatron’s hand. No doubt the giant oaf was ruining his polish… but it would have to be redone anyway. Starscream was already—very happily—scuffed halfway to scrap.

Megatron had even played right into Starscream’s hands for once. So many important little decisions could be influenced during pillow talk. And it was… nice. A secondary concern, obviously, but even having Megatron’s hollow and staticky voice crooning to him how _vicious_ and _lovely_ he was, while they sprawled with their cabling scandalously entwined and their cooling systems screaming in the cold air… well, no more than Starscream deserved, of course, but he was so used to receiving less than he was owed that it seemed wonderful. 

“Indeed,” said Megatron, oddly agreeable. An agreeable Megatron was a rare thing indeed, so Starscream could appreciate it while it happened. 

“Speaking of energon, Starscream,” he said then, sounding somewhat less agreeable and more suspicious all of a sudden. “I notice that there's been no raid schedule posted yet.”

Starscream’s good humour flickered. 

“The raid schedule.” That was his responsibility, yes. And he had ignored it for cycles now… _also_ yes. 

His pleasure-hazy processor stumbled over itself as he scrambled for an exc—a reason. For a reason. 

"If you feel you have too many responsibilities," Megatron threatened, "it might be reasonable to _lighten the load_. I could give somebody else the responsibility."

"No!" One of his wings twitched. Megatron watched it with interest. 

"No?"

“It’s not _my_ fault,” Starscream temporised. A moment later, it occurred to him that he could probably just tell the truth: he had been so occupied with the Autobot spy, a situation that clearly took precedence, that his more routine duties had fallen slightly behind. 

But now he’d already started out by claiming it wasn’t his fault, and he couldn’t change the story… 

“The raid schedule is complete, of _course_.”

Or it would be once his sorting algorithm had reassessed the sites his troops had scouted and spat out the top Earth sites that promised maximum reward against moderate- and low-risk of combat. (Decepticon warriors liked and needed battle, but Cybertronians fuelling only on half-rations couldn’t have combat on _every_ raid.)

“I see,” said Megatron in a dry tone that very much indicated that he did _not_ see. 

“Really, Megatron, it was posted cycles ago. If the general communications network isn’t functioning within acceptable parameters, that’s Soundwave’s problem.” 

Soundwave, of course, was engaged with their prisoner. He wasn’t here to defend himself, and he could not be spared to answer irrelevant questions about mundanities—which made him the perfect scapegoat. 

“Hmm.” The hum didn’t so much indicate that Megatron was buying it as it did that he could not immediately disprove it. “I’m sure,” he said. He did not sound sure. “You have a joor, Starscream,” he rumbled finally. 

Ha! Starscream was already astromiles ahead of him. 

He’d have the schedule done and posted before there was any need to bring Soundwave into it at all. 

Megatron’s hand returned to stroking up and down his back, and all the tension leaked right out of Starscream’s frame all over again. Oh, that felt _good_, a warm shuddery sensation that spread from the contact. Yes…

Starscream’s engine gave a low involuntary purr. He ignored it (although Megatron certainly didn’t) and quietly schemed the best ways to steal the humans’ fuel, and it was good. 

* * *

Genesis’s whole frame shuddered when he saw the distant but clearly recognisable shape of Prowl across their neutral territory. 

His stiff doors and enormous glossy bumper, far from striking a hint of nervousness into Genesis’s laser core, flooded him with an acute wash of cold relief. It had been so long since he’d seen another Autobot that even the socially defective presence of his least personable commanding officer seemed like a _delight_. 

The clicking of his plating resettling didn’t go unheard, so he got some curious looks from his guards—mostly Decepticon flight-frames. That, he assumed, was Starscream’s efforts at maintaining his influence over the situation, even though it seemed obvious to Genesis that this was Soundwave’s show. 

“Scared?” Vortex wondered. The question sounded genuine—largely because Vortex was genuinely interested in other mechanisms' fear and stress. Despite his earnest tone, his rotors went _clack-clack-clack_, spinning mockingly at Genesis.

A Decepticon would have blustered and insisted he was not scared. Genesis, having spent so long with them, was sure of it now. Instead he flatly said, “Terrified,” and nothing more. 

Vortex's internals made a curious humming noise. Genesis ignored this.

The shapes accompanying Prowl resolved themselves into mechs he recognised as the distance between them disappeared: Sideswipe and Sunstreaker with their flashy finishes, Jazz’s pointy helm and deceptively small frame, Silverbolt’s sturdy low-altitude frame. 

No Optimus Prime that he could see—the Decepticons weren’t fielding Megatron, and the personnel had been carefully negotiated, but Genesis suspected that, just as Megatron must be monitoring the situation, Prime would be nearby in order to intervene if it went badly. 

To Genesis’s guilty relief and mild surprise, it did not go badly at all—he stood with Soundwave right at his back as Jazz and Sideswipe cheerfully (on the surface, at least) stacked up a hundred mega cubes, each one of which had to be ten times a full ration for a Decepticon warrior. The dull glow of the energon made the sensitive tubing in his throat squeeze and clench hopefully. 

After days of gruelling work and ugly injuries on half rations, and then _more_ days of Skywarp absconding with the meagre quarter-cube allotted to prisoners, even the sight of all that sealed energon made Genesis’s systems ping him with hunger, over and over. 

His control over them was so battered from Soundwave’s efficient, rigorous and repeated invasions that he couldn’t even shut the notifications off. By the time Soundwave nodded at the energon stack and gave him an encouraging little shove forward, Genesis’s systems were registering an error. He deleted the whole queue. 

He stumbled, but didn’t fall, and made it past the enticing glow of the cubes and straight into the hands of Jazz and Sideswipe. The feeling of their touch was so strange after so long—weeks, really—in which the kindest touch he’d felt was Drag Strip pinching his wings or Soundwave fixing his cranial plating back on. 

Genesis twitched. 

Jazz hesitated, but Sideswipe’s grip just got tighter on his arm.

“I’ve gotcha,” he said, surprisingly serious. 

There was a long, tense moment in which Prowl and Soundwave stared at one another with dire, heavily-armed suspicion, but as the Autobots retreated with Genesis, there was no sign of further hostilities. 

It stood to reason, Genesis guessed hazily: the Decepticons were basically starving. Soundwave was the commanding officer on site. He wasn’t Starscream, who just _did... **things**?_, or Megatron, who _shot people for no reason_. He was too sensible to turn down the energon just to engage in the pleasure and joy of combat. 

“They’ll take the energon and go,” he muttered to Jazz. “They have to.”

Jazz nodded, and clapped him gently on the arm, pointedly ignoring his surprised twitch. “I hear you, mech, but we’ve got it from here. I bet Ratchet’s waiting for you.”

“Okay,” sighed Genesis, which was itself proof that he needed the help. It was a rare occasion that anyone wanted to be in Ratchet’s care—he was known for his bedside manner, and not in a good way. 

On the other hand, Ratchet was _an Autobot medic_. Genesis would have paid in his own fuel to see him by then. 

With the wary cover of Prowl, Sunstreaker and Silverbolt, Genesis found himself herded gently but quickly aboard Skyfire. He nearly missed the enormous shuttle’s friendly greeting ping amid all the internal errors piling up. 

“You want us to go down there and take that energon back?” 

Genesis heard Sideswipe ask it, but he didn’t really register the question until Prowl responded. 

“No. Soundwave has selected a neutral ground within kilometres of a human city—the likelihood of casualties is extremely high if we engage them. And Megatron is bound to be nearby somewhere. If _he_ gets involved, we will need to call Optimus Prime in for support, especially with those air troops—”

One of Silverbolt’s wings flicked unhappily, but Genesis didn’t think anyone else was paying attention—except maybe Jazz, who was always paying attention. 

“Sunny and I,” started Sideswipe. 

“No,” repeated Prowl. 

Sideswipe heaved a huge, deep, very dramatic sigh. In a perverse, unexpected association, Genesis was reminded of Skywarp. He hoped that wouldn’t linger. 

“Genesis will need to be debriefed.”

“Ratchet said—” Jazz interjected. 

“Ratchet isn’t here,” Prowl pointed out, optics flicking from Genesis to Jazz and back again. “Conference room three, Genesis,” he added. 

Genesis thought, a little longingly, of a nice, completely uncomfortable repair berth and a painful and invasive wing reconstruction. 

He met Prowl’s steady and uncompromising optics anyway. 

“Yes, sir,” he said, even as Jazz made a short, unhappy noise next to him. 

Fortunately, it was a lot easier to submit to an order from Prowl than from Starscream.

* * *

Back on the Victory that evening, Skywarp’s fuel tank was finally full—actually _full_, like _95%_ and _heavy_ with energon. It was the first time in what felt like years. 

Usually when any of them got so full it might affect their flight times, Starscream was right there and just waiting to lecture the whole Air Corps at top, screechy volume, a thing that Skywarp had little enthusiasm for. But neither he, nor Thundercracker, had seen any hint of Starscream since—as rumour (and the illicitly accessed security cameras) had it—Megatron had thrown him over one shoulder and stormed out of the command centre. 

Which was _several solar cycles_ ago. 

That was alright. Skywarp had sent him one comm message that read only: _get it!_ and as he hadn’t heard anything back, he had to assume that Starscream was taking this excellent advice to the limit. Or… dead. One or the other. 

Skywarp hoped he was getting fragged ‘til his circuits burnt out and not dead. That’d be a shame.

He sprawled onto his back on the berth he shared with Thundercracker, purring his engine low and wiggling his wings against the resistance of the berth padding. 

Thundercracker was not at all concerned by the amount of space he took up, and crawled right over him to slot his limbs into the spaces not taken up by Skywarp’s. 

He was _warm_, too, and not with exertion or injury. He was warm in a way Skywarp hadn’t felt in what seemed like forever. The powerful mechanics inside Thundercracker’s frame were all at work, waking up secondary systems, converting all that fresh clean fuel to the brightening glow of his optics and the rapid increase in self-repair operations. 

The weight of him bore Skywarp hard into the padding. It was so warm and heavy and wonderful, and as Thundercracker’s engine purred luxuriously away deep in his frame, Skywarp also felt himself relax.

This was the life: full tanks, warm wings, at least a few joors of down time to take a long, restful nap in deep recharge…

Thundercracker’s wing rubbed along the flat of Skywarp’s, long and slow, loud in the quiet, and very deliberate. There was enough fuel in him that Skywarp could feel a flicker of charge light up the sensory circuitry beneath his plating.

Skywarp’s plating cracked open, chiming gently as he shivered. Thundercracker immediately got his fingers buried in the enticing shadows of the cracks. He couldn’t reach very much, not these days, with Skywarp’s heavy armour. But his fingertips skimmed teasingly over little patches of soft protoform and exquisitely sensitive wires, which rarely saw any contact. 

“We don’t have to recharge right now, right?” Thundercracker asked, in a tone that was much, much too neutral for what he was getting up to with his hands. 

“Nnnno…” said Skywarp, tipping his helm right back in blatant invitation—which, oh, Thundercracker took, right there, putting his teeth on a plate in his neck that covered some very particular circuitry. The pressure compressed the components underneath and he whined. His visual feed sparkled. 

“Don’t need to recharge,” he whimpered. 

He could feel Thundercracker smile. 

They did recharge eventually—very, very eventually—and that was almost as good as the interfacing. Warm, satisfied, full of fuel and with his self-repair operating at over 90% efficiency for a change, Skywarp was so comfortable and contented, with his wing curled over Thundercracker, that it would have taken an all-hands emergency alert to move him so much as an inch. 

In fact, he hazily thought, the only thing that could really improve this situation was some assurance that more energon would be forthcoming. 

A ping hit the general comms network, as if in answer to his thoughts. 

Thundercracker dozed right through it, but Skywarp was already more than half awake. He accessed it, noting Starscream’s ID—so whatever _else_ he was doing, he was also working, Skywarp guessed.

Like some kind of primus-sent miracle, the raiding schedule unfolded in the files of Skywarp’s immediate consciousness. 

_Fragging finally_, he thought. 

Then he closed the file and snuggled harder into Thundercracker’s wing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! I hereby yeet it into the sun. If you liked something about this fic, or found it funny or something, please feel free to let me know what you liked about it in a comment. You can find me on [tumblr](https://cardio-vore.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/fascination_ex) if you want. Otherwise, have a good night!


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